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SAVE OUTCOME O Oe Ne ok (3 Canuet i Pork o ay
y
Members of the Ethiopian Christian community participate in an annual candlelight ceremony called Maskal (cross finding)
al Malcolm X Park in the District of Columbia.
Photo by Harold Dorwin, © Smithsonian Institution
SMIWMHPSONIA NW STITUWFION
Festival of | American Folklife
On the National Mall
WASHINGTON, D.C. June 25 — 29 & July 2—0
Cosponsored by the National Park Service
1997 Festival of American Folklife
On the Cover
At this baptism at Lake Providence, Louisiana, in the Delta region, the minister repeats a prayer as each candidate, dressed in traditional robe and headgear,
is immersed. The baptized are then received by members of the church and taken away to change. Photo © Susan Roach
Site Map on the Back Cover
Hazel Dailey from Columbia, Louisiana, works with the insert to the pressure cooker she uses in canning produce.
Photo by Sylvia Frantom
Tradition-based social occasions like this coffee ceremony at the Washing- ton, D.C, home of Hermela Kebede reinforce ties between generations of Ethiopian women living in the United States. Photo by Harold Dorwin,
© Smithsonian Institution
At a gathering of the Zion Christian Church in South Africa’s northern province of Moria, the men of Mokhukhu dance as an expression of faith. Photo ©T.J. Lemon
The Carolina Tar Heels (left to right, Clarence [Tom] Ashley, Doc Walsh, Gwen Foster), ca. 1930.
Photo courtesy CFPCS Archive
Crop dusting cotton fields in the Mississippi Delta. Photo © Maida Owens
1997 Festival of American Folklife
General . Information 84
Services & Hours
Participants
Daily Schedules
Contributors & Sponsors
Staff
Teachers Seminars
Friends of the Festival Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Contents |. Michael Heyman The Festival: More Than a Song 6
Bruce Babbitt On the Banks of the River Together 7
Richard Kurin The Festival of American Folklife: 8 Culture, Dead or Alive?
Diana Parker The Festival of American 8 Folklife & You
The Mississippi Delta Tom Rankin
Cane Brakes, High Water, 12 Drought: The Mississippi Delta
Deborah Boykin At Home in the Delta 17
Susan Roach "Willing to Take a Risk": 21 Working in the Delta
Mike Luster At Play in the Delta 26
Joyce Marie Jackson
"Like a River 31
Flowing with Living Water": _ Worshiping in the Mississippi Delta
ee
African
Immigrant Folklife Diana Baird N'Diaye
African Immigrant Culture in 36 Metropolitan Washington, D.C:
Building & Bridging Communities
Celebrations in African
Immigrant Communities
Sulayman S. Nyang
Islamic Celebrations in the African 40 Immigrant Communities in Washington, D.C. Kwaku Ofori-Ansa & Peter Pipim
Nature & Significance of Durbar 41 in Ghanaian Societies
Molly Egondu Uzo &
Tonye Victor Erekosima
lkeji Masquerade in New York City & 42 Ofirima Masquerade in Washington, D.C.: Research Reports on Two Cultural Adaptations Diana Baird N'Diaye with Gilbert Ogunfiditimi & Frederick Ogunfiditimi Yoruba Naming Ceremony in 4 Washington, D.C.
Remi Aluko & Diana Sherblom
Passing Culture on to the 45 Next Generation: African Immigrant Language & Culture Schools in Washington, D.C.
From a Research Report by Kofi Kissi Dompere & Cece Modupé Fadopé African Immigrant Music & Dance 4 in Washington, D.C.
Nomvula Mashoai Cook &
Betty J. Belanus
A Taste of Home: African 51 Immigrant Foodways
Ann Nosiri Olumba
African Immigrant 54 Community Broadcast Media Kinuthia Macharia 57
African Immigrant Enterprise in Metropolitan Washington, D.C: A Photo Essay
Sacred Sounds James Early
Sacred Sounds: Belief & Society 60
Marcus Ramogale & Sello Galane Faith in Action: Mokhuhku of the Zion Christian Church
Angela Impey Songs of the Night: /sicathamiya 67 Choral Music from KwaZulu Natal
Jeff Todd Titon Old Regular Baptists of Southeastern 71 Kentucky: A Community of Sacred Song
Friends of the Festival Ralph Rinzler Memorial Concert: Celebrating the Revival of Old-Time Southern Music & Dance Introduction —Kate Rinzler introduction —Mike Seeger
Bess Lomax Hawes
When We Were Joyful V7 Mike Seeger
Crusaders for Old-Time Music 78 Brad Leftwich
Coming of Age 79
© 1997 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ISSN 1056-6805
EDITOR: Carla M. Borden
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Peter Seitel
ART DIRECTOR: Kenn Shrader
DESIGNER: Karin Hayes
PRODUCTION MANAGER: Eric Conn
ul
See tn SO NT ACN: IN'S TD LU CT ON
Festival of American Folklife
1997 Festival of American Folklife
The Festival: More Than a Song
|. Michael Heyman
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution There is another world of culture created and sustained in homes, communities, places of work and worship.... It is the culture highlighted at our annual Festival of American Folklife.
views of culture. Cultural enterprises including movies, television, theme parks, recordings, and video stores constitute one of the world’s largest industries.
There is another world of culture created and sustained in homes, communities, places of work and worship. Our lullabies and hymns, liturgical chants and celebratory songs, songs of work, struggle, and mourning, are rarely heard in music stores or on radio stations. It is the culture highlighted at our annual Festival of American Folklife.
We have three programs at this year’s Festival. Sacred Sounds brings together people from a variety of religious communities, from around the nation, Jerusalem, and from South Africa. Their songs express spiritual feelings and convictions connecting their lives to tradition.
A second program, African Immigrant Folklife, illus- trates the many traditions of recent immigrants to the United States from Africa. These immigrants participate in a changing culture, as people, families, and communities find their place in American society.
The Mississippi Delta, the subject of a third Festival program, 1s a culturally rich region of the United States that has given us blues, jazz, rockabilly and rock ’n’ roll, honky tonk, distinctive forms of gospel, oratory, marvel- ous stories, folk and visionary art, and an encyclopedia of river lore — not to mention barbecue and fish fries. These cultural expressions have been continually shaped by the daily experience — the work, worship, home life, and recreation — of the people who live there.
The Festival is a good example of how the Smithsonian can reach large audiences in an educational and enter- taining way. As its organizers are fond of saying, though, the Festival is also much more than occurs on the National Mall. Over the past decade the Festival has generated more than a dozen television documentaries, a score of Smithsonian Folkways recordings, learning guides for schools in several countries and various regions of the United States. And now we have the Virtual Festival on our World Wide Web pages (at www.si.edu/folklife/vfest).
Our course is clear. We must use modern mass media to communicate the value of cultural traditions while maintaining our values as scholars and educators. Our “ratings” are measured by how successfully we can reach the broadest number of people and thus realize our original mission to increase and diffuse knowledge.
Ai he entertainment industry today dominates popular
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
1997 Festival of American Folklife
On the Banks of the River Together
Bruce Babbitt
Secretary of the Interior
The Department of the Interior has as part of its mission the protection of a magnificent and bountiful heritage.... [This] includes our
cultural heritage.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
he Department of the Interior has as part of its T mission the protection of a magnificent and bounti-
ful heritage. This includes the natural environment, like America’s rivers and other waterways. But it also includes our cultural heritage, that which defines our sense of place and unites us as a people, as a nation, and as a world community.
This year at the Festival we are proud to join with the Smithsonian Institution in celebrating the traditions of the Mississippi Delta, a culturally rich region where Native, Spanish, African, French, and American people all merged, just as many tributaries flow into one river. Beginning even before the arrival of Europeans, the Mississippi has been a source of food and irrigation, a highway for commerce, a strategic center for political power, a source of inspiration for song and spirit.
We also celebrate the enterprise and vitality of recent immigrants to the United States from Africa, who have brought their cultures across the Atlantic Ocean. At the Festival, we will also hear in Sacred Sounds some of the ways in which music flows from the spirit of a diverse humanity to express its highest aspirations.
It is most fitting that we gather on the lovely National Mall, here among the national monuments and museums. Here we are part of the confluence of two historic and living watersheds, the Anacostia River and the Potomac River; where their waters and traditions join together, we celebrate our American and human cultural heritage.
Festival of
1997 Festival of American Folklife
nyone who visits e Aisin DIC: around the Fourth
of July can’t miss the Festival of American Folklife. Held in coopera- tion with the National Park Service, spread out in a sea of large white tents across the National Mall, the Festival is an annual living exhibition of cultural her- itage from around the United States and the world. It extends the Smithsonian outdoors but in displays very different from those of the Institution’s traditional museums.
Since its inception, the Festival of American Folklife has featured more than 16,000 musicians, artists, performers, craftspeople, workers, cooks, story- tellers, ritual specialists, and other exemplars from numerous ethnic, tribal, regional, and occupational cul- tures. The Festival is a research-based, curated production, drawing on the efforts of Smithsonian staff, academic and lay scholars from the featured states or regions, and plain folks who know a great deal about their community. The Festival typically includes daily and evening programs of music, song, dance, celebratory performance, craft and cooking demonstrations, storytelling, illustrations of workers’ culture, and narrative sessions for discussing cultural issues.
If the Festival as a whole is like a temporary museum, each Festival program is akin to an exhibition, with its own boundaries and space (about two football fields), labels and signage. A good-sized program consists of about 100 participants and a dozen lay and academic scholars we call presenters, who provide background information, introductions, translations, and help answer visitors’ questions. Programs have featured world regions, particular nations, transnational cultural groups, American states, and ethnic groups; the cultures of the elderly, the young, and the deaf; and occupational groups from
American Folklife: Culture, Dead or Alive?
Richard Kurin
8
cowboys to taxi drivers, meat cutters, bricklayers, Senators (as in baseball players) and senators (as in members of Congress), doctors, trial lawyers, domestic servants in the White House, and even scientists at the Smithsonian.
The Festival attempts to create a physical context for the traditions represented. In the past, the Festival has included, among other things, a race course from Kentucky, an oil rig from Oklahoma, a glacier from Alaska, a New Jersey boardwalk, a New Mexican adobe plaza, a Japanese rice paddy, a Senegalese home com- pound, and an Indian festival village. Animals, from cow- cutting horses to llamas, from steers to sheared sheep, have been part of Festival presentations. A buffalo calf was even born on the Mall one Festival morning, and an escaped steer was roped to the ground in the Kennedy Center parking lot after a chase down Constitution Avenue.
The Festival has had strong impacts on policies, scholarship, and folks “back home.” Many U.S. states and several nations have remounted a Festival program and used it to generate laws, institutions, educational programs, documentary films, recordings, exhibitions, monographs, and cultural activities. In many cases, the Festival has energized local and regional tradition bearers and their communities and thus helped conserve and | create cultural resources. Research for the Festival and documentation of its presentations have entailed complex local collaborations and training and have resulted in a documentary archival collection at the Smithsonian that is also shared with various local institutions. These resources have been used for various publications by staff scholars and fellows and for Smithsonian Folkways recordings and other educational products, which have won, among |
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
1997 Festival of American Folklife
me to the 1997 Festival of American . The Festival is a Smithsonian ion, and in many ways itis very like inside the museums. It requires research, is guided by people who knowledge in the area being present- ws the same bureaucratic and program- ins as all Smithsonian exhibitions. In vever, it is quite different. Take one of tibitions, the Museum of American
d to Factory, for instance. If you had seum and could go in at midnight and the exhibition, it would still be the e Festival of American Folklife at nch of signs and empty tents. is the heart of the Festival: the artists
who are being presented, and you.
The point of the Festival is to give you access to some of the most interesting thinkers, artists, and workers alive today. They carry with them a wealth of skill and wisdom, and, by agreeing to come to the Festival, they have agreed to share that knowledge with you. They may be doing things that are unfamiliar to you — singing a different song, wearing different clothes, cooking different foods — or they may be enacting something that you know as well as you know your own name. In either case, talk to them. Thank them for coming to the Festival. Ask about what they do. Find out more about what it means. This Festival you are attending is the ultimate interactive medium. Play it to the hilt. You may be surprised what the outcome will be.
At the 1996 Festival a visitor asked a fiddle player where she had learned a particularly lovely tune she was playing. After about five minutes of conversation they realized that they had met twenty years before on another continent. A warm friendship was renewed. At the 1986 Festival a Tennessee cooper started questioning a Japanese saki cask maker about his barrels. The Tennessean eventually applied for and received a grant to go to Japan and study the way that his skills and the Japanese traditions overlapped. Your experience may not be as dramatic as these, but | promise you it will be rewarding. Be brave. Talk to people. Make a new friend.
Diana Parker began working for the Festival of American Folklife in 1975 and has served as its director since 1984.
others, Academy, Emmy, and Grammy awards and nominations.
The Festival is free to the public and attracts about one million visitors. As the largest annual cultural event in the U.S. capital, the Festival offers insights into the way culture is presented to mass audiences and stands as an alternative type of museum display as well as of scholarly/ curatorial practice.
FESTIVAL BACKGROUND
The Festival began in 1967 under Secretary S. Dillon Ripley. In the mid-sixties, Ripley surveyed a stretch of the National Mall — that vast greensward extending from the U.S. Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. Here was the Smithsonian’s front yard and, indeed, following Martin Luther King’s use of the Mall for the Civil Rights march, the front yard of the nation. Yet to Ripley it looked dead — he called the Mall “Forest Lawn on the Potomac.” He wanted to engage the public and signal the openness of the Smithsonian complex. He had several proposals for livening it up — a carousel, a bandstand — but he needed something big and dramatic that fit the Smithsonian’s larger mission.
A proposal from James Morris, his head of Museum Services (and later Performing Arts), was to produce a folk festival. Morris was interested in American folk traditions, largely from a theatrical perspective, and had previously initiated the American Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina. This festival, which lasted only
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
a few years, was a staged performance — it was something written and directed. Ripley was interested in the idea, but it was to take a more ethnographic turn.
Alan Lomax, a well-known scholar, folklorist, writer, and music researcher who had been at the Library of Congress and was working with the Newport Folk Festival, suggested that the Smithsonian hire Ralph Rinzler, Newport’s director of field research, to help develop the Smithsonian program. Rinzler had done documentary fieldwork in the American South and among French Americans. He had managed Bill Monroe’s revived career, “discovered” Doc Watson, and introduced Dewey Balfa and Cajun music to general audiences. A college friend of folklorist Roger Abrahams, friend of Peggy Seeger, and sometime employee of Moe Asch at Folkways Records, Ralph was a child of the Folk Revival in the fifties and sixties. He learned songs in New York’s Washington Square Park from Woody Guthrie, was close friends with Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul & Mary), and played with the Greenbriar Boys, an urban bluegrass group — the opening act for which was Bob Dylan. Rinzler was a musician and impresario but also had a scholarly mind and temperament and soaked in lessons from musicologist Charles Seeger, Lomax, and numerous other mentors and colleagues.
Morris, Rinzler, and others put together the first Festival in 1967 — a four-day affair overlapping the Fourth of July, with performances by Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, Moving Star Hall
1997 Festival of American Folklife
Singers, storyteller Janie Hunter, the Olympia Brass Band from New Orleans, Acoma potters, coil basket makers, Navajo sand painters, cowboy singer Glenn Ohrlin, Libba Cotton, bluesman John Jackson, and Eskimo, Puerto Rican, Russian, and Irish musicians and dancers.
Wrote Paul Richard of The Washington Post about the Festival, “The marble museums of the Smithsonian are filled with beautiful handworn things made long ago by forgotten American craftsmen. Nostalgic reminders of our folk craft heritage, the museum exhibits are discreetly displayed, precisely labeled, and dead. But the folk craft tradition has not died. Yesterday it burst into life before the astonished eyes of visitors on the Mall.”
Mary McGrory echoed the sentiment and thanked Dillon Ripley, who was quoted as saying, “My thought is that we have dulcimers in cases in the museum, but how many people have actually heard one or seen one being made?”
Working with folklorist Henry Glassie, the Smithsonian organized a conference that first year to help define this new genre that abutted the museum world. The participants included anthropologists, folklorists, and musicologists: Lomax, Abrahams, Asch, Ward Goodenough, D.K. Wilgus, Don Yoder, and Archie Green; architect James Marston Fitch, geographer Fred Kniffen, and several international scholars. Others with a social activist orientation from the Civil Rights and Labor movements — Miles Horton, Bernice Reagon, Pete Seeger — also got involved. The Festival early on became a vehicle for public education and advocacy, giving recognition to the traditional wisdom, knowledge, skills, and artistry of cultural groups not well represented at the Smithsonian or in the society at large.
THE FESTIVAL MODEL
Though Ripley’s own view of folk culture may have been somewhat nostalgic, he nonetheless saw the importance of the Festival as an alternative to traditional ethnographic museum displays. As he wrote in The Sacred Grove, “There is another realm in museums for anthropologists. This is in connection with folk culture or folklife.” The Festival was an attempt by the Smithsonian to turn museology outward, to connect with the public, and to amplify the voices of those represented. The national treasures celebrated at the Festival are the people themselves. At the time, there was a trend in the museum world of using “living history” as a presentational or interpretive technique. Whereas living history
10
performances were acted, the Festival emphasized authenticity — the presence and participation of the living people who were active and exemplary practitioners of the represented communities and traditions. Whereas living history was “scripted,” Festival folks were encouraged to speak for themselves, in dialogue with each other, scholars, and the visiting public. The power of the Festival was that the presentations were legitimated by the authority of the Smithsonian, occurred in proximity to the national museums, and were located in symbolically potent space, at a symbolically loaded time.
The Festival has become a model of cultural representation and brokerage that has been imitated, analyzed, lauded, and criticized. A number of books raise historical and ethical issues about the nature of the Festival. In combining and crossing such categories as education and entertainment, scholarship and service, the authentic and the artificial, celebration and examination, the Festival is a genre that can be misunderstood and misconstrued. Existing as part of the Smithsonian’s museum complex, the Festival has been called “a living museum without walls” and “a living cultural exhibit.” It has also been spoken of as human zoo, cultural theme park, ritual of rebellion, tool of the state, and national block party.
As for the relationship between the representation of culture at the Festival and in the museums, Dean Anderson, a former Smithsonian Under Secretary, said, “Whereas the museum is a noun, the Festival is a verb.” Others moving between the Natural History Museum and the Festival have found the former staid, grown up, propertied, and static, the latter interactive, youthful, and alive. If the Festival is regarded as a youthful outpost of ethnography at the Smithsonian, it became so, not by prior design, but rather because the people organizing and developing the Festival were interested in a particular type of cultural study and presentation.
Differences in orientation between the Festival and the Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology are instructive. The Festival has always had a strong interest in representing American culture as well as that from around the world, whereas the Department of Anthropology has not dealt much with Europe and non- tribal America. The Festival is strongly attuned to how people create culture in their everyday life today; it does not have the time depth of the museum. Like Anthro- pology, the Festival deals with ethnic and tribal cultures, but it goes beyond those forms to occupational,
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
1997 Festival of American Folklife
(erin ice
° on i c ° Ww r= eh)
ay —_ ie
Stephen Weil, senior scholar and former Deputy Director of the Hirshhorn Museum, helps present a young collector to the public at the Birthday Party on the Mall.
Photo by T. Heilemann, courtesy Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian’s 150th anniversary “Birthday Party on the Mall” used the Festival model to show the vitality of the Institution. Museum and program pavilions featuring scientists, curators, and educators were combined with The Bahamas. “encore” performances by people and groups who have
worked closely with the Smithsonian. Here a Bahamian
associational, and institutional cultures. The Festival is focused on expressive traditions, whereas the Department has a four-field approach (joining ethnography with physical anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics) deeply rooted in its history. The Festival is interested more in culture performed than culture exhibited; it concentrates on illustrating or demonstrating cultural processes rather than on acquiring or collecting things; and the Festival has always valued negotiated, brokered, dialogically formulated representations above more monological scholarly publications and products.
Numerous events — from the Black Family Reunion to the L.A. Festival, from the Festival of Michigan Folklife to a national festival for India, from a festival of Hawaiian culture to an indigenous culture and development festival in Ecuador, from the “America’s Reunion on the Mall” festival for a presidential inaugural to “Southern Crossroads,” a festival of the American South for Atlanta’s Olympic Games — have drawn upon the Smithsonian’s approach to show that culture is vital and alive, made and remade every day amongst people from every type of community, and aptly shared with fellow human beings. Indeed, even the venerable old Smithsonian drew upon the Festival as a model for the
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
Junkanoo rush-out heads down the Mall, recreating their rush two years earlier at the Festival — an event that stimulated cultural, scholarly, and educational efforts in
Photo by J. Tinsley, courtesy Smithsonian Institution
production of its own 150th anniversary celebration in a mile-long Birthday Party held for some 600,000 on the National Mall August 10-11, 1996. Some of the Smithsonian ancestors might have been quite surprised, but I think ultimately heartened, to learn that the Festival genre, historically used to represent others, had become a successful means of representing ourselves.
Dr. Richard Kurin is Director of the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife Programs & Cultural Studies, which produces the Festival. He first worked on the Festival in 1976. He is the author of Reflections of a Culture Broker: A View from the Smithsonian (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997) and was awarded the Secretary’s Gold Medal for Exceptional Service to the Smithsonian in 1996.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this article was presented at the meetings of the American Anthro- pological Association in December and published in Anthro Notes, vol. 19, no. 1.
11
The Mississippi Delta
Cane Brakes, ‘High Water, Drought: The Mississippi Delta
Tom Rankin
“This land, this South ... with woods for game and streams for fish and deep rich soil for seeds.”
—from Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner
Support for this program comes from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, the Mississippi Arts Commission, The Recording Industries Music Performance Trust Funds, and The Rhythm & Blues Foundation.
he term Delta is used in [een ways up and
down the Mississippi River. But when most people, especially those not from the region, say Mississippi Delta, they refer to the area formed by the alluvial flood plain of the lower Mississippi River and incorporating parts of four states, a region disting- uished by both geographic and cultural characteristics. From the flat, rich land of west Tennessee through parts of Arkansas, Missis- sippi, and Louisiana, the entire region Owes many of its cultural traditions to the Mississippi River and the many smaller rivers that permeate the area, some with names reflective of the Native Americans who first settled there or other groups who came later: the Obion, Hatchie, and Loosahatchie in Tennessee; the Yazoo, Tallahatchie, Sunflower, and Coldwater in Missis- sippi; the Arkansas, White, and St. Francis in Arkansas; the Ouachita and Black in Louisiana. Entire commun- ities, operating with varying codes and customs based on indigenous traditions, have evolved around the region’s rivers and bayous: from the commercial fisherfolk, trap- pers, and towboat workers, whose houses often cluster near major rivers, landings, and levees; to African- American ministers and their congregations, who
12
wade into the waters to baptize believers “the old way”; to the privileged planters’ sons, whose membership in the exclusive hunting clubs along the river is bestowed by the accident of birth. The rivers are imbued with personal, local, and regional symbolism and significance. Acknowledged as the birthplace of the blues, the home of “King Cotton,” America’s “last wilderness,” and the source of a variety of uniquely American art forms, the Delta is often discussed and portrayed as a powerful, evocative place. The Delta “shines like a national guitar” to singer/songwriter Paul Simon, and to Mississippi writer Eudora Welty the Delta is a place where “most of the world seemed sky ... seemed strummed, as though it were an instrument and something had touched it.” Indeed, a great deal has touched the Mississippi Delta to form it and to distinguish it from other regions. Much of its distinctiveness has been attributed to its “Southern-ness.” Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford called the Mississippi Delta “the South’s South.” “The Deepest South ... the heart of Dixie.... Nowhere are ante-bellum conditions so nearly preserved as in the Yazoo Delta,” observed Rupert Vance in 1935, as he contrasted the living conditions and lifestyles of the Mississippi Delta’s planter elite with those of its illiterate and impoverished Black masses. Certainly one of the common legacies of the entire Mississippi Delta region is the stark contrasts evident there. Just as the Delta can be rich and fertile, it can also be poor and desolate; just as one can hear the powerful chords of humanity’s best music there, one can also witness Delta nights of terror and inequality; just as natural resources are abundant, so can everyday life be harsh. But in each of the extremes is a powerful culture. Truly few places exhibit a more striking example of the affinity and interaction between humans and nature than the Mississippi Delta. Today’s Delta is still largely rural and agricultural, its economy very closely tied to the land. With its vast expanses of sky, one can actually watch the weather, as clouds gather and boil across one horizon and the sun or moon blazes brilliantly on the other. In spite of a century of clearing, cultivating, draining, and land leveling, the region retains its primitive swamps, bayous, and cypress brakes. In Go Down, Moses William Faulkner described the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta: In the beginning, it was virgin — to the west, along the Big Black River, the alluvial swamps threaded by black, almost motionless bayous and
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
AVITAL BCA
TENNESSEE ARKANSAS
Region Represented in The Mississippi Delta at the Festival of American Folklife
States’ Counties nos | Comprising MISSOURI the elta
(29 counties)
-
e e e
Distribution of
Blues Musicians
Location of birthplaces of hema
blues musicians, 1890 — 1920 Ga
Map by George 0. Carney Kay et National Park Service map;
Source uh Rooney, Jr., Wilbur Zelinsky, ay MISSISSIPPI Lower Mississippi Delta region
and Dean R. Louder, 9 OF (82 counties) HB Original Delta
) LOUISIANA ATT {IPM Additional study Area by
(64 parishes) \ 2s as Legislation
impenetrable with cane and buckvine and cypress deep rich soil for seed and lush springs to sprout and ash and oak and gum.... This land, this South it and long summers to mature it and serene falls ... with woods for game and streams for fish and to harvest it and short mild winters for men and
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE 13
The Mississippi Delta
animals.... That's the trouble with this country. Everything, weather, all, hangs on too long. Like our rivers, our land: opaque, slow, violent; shaping and creating the life of man in its implacable and brooding image.
Greenville, Mississippi, native and newspaper editor Hodding Carter, Sr., =. characterized the region in his 1942 book on the Mississippi: “The Lower Missis- sippi’s valley is a precarious Eden, which the river has fashioned and caused to be populated because of its promise. It is a promise beset by ordeal and still only partly fulfilled.”
Carter also echoed Faulkner when he wrote about the historical legacies of the fertile, overgrown landscape:
Go quietly at dawn into those brakes of cypress and cane and cottonwood and water oak. Paddle beside the banks of the Mississippi's bayous and false lakes which once were part of its channel. You will find something of what the Spaniard, the Frenchman, and the Englishman swore and mar- veled at: the disordered lavishness of a wilderness sprung from the earth droppings of a river’s uncounted years.
Full of pestilence — malaria, typhoid, and yellow fever — and unyielding and unnavigable terrain, the Delta remained a frontier wilderness until well after the Civil War. This is a fact that the familiar Delta stereotype doesn’t include.
More recent accounts still highlight the Mississippi Delta’s place as a veritable wilderness, in part. Thomas Foti, an ecologist with the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, described the lower White River as a “special place ... still the wildest region of the Delta.” According to Foti, in addition to supporting a core of committed houseboat dwellers who work on it, the White River also hosts the “only indigenous black bear population in Arkansas, the only productive eagle nest in
IGA
CONT MLS
14
Mississippi. | HOO
the state.” H. F. Gregory, a Louisiana folklorist, has written that many older residents make a distinction between the “front lands” and “back lands” of the Louisiana Delta, the “back lands” being the wilder, natural, swampy landscapes. “The back lands remained as swamplands,” explained Gregory, “refuges for animals, birds, and people displaced from the plantation areas.” Agricultural interests began draining the back lands in the 1970s, changing the environment, Gregory argued, to the point that “today only in game preserves can one see the original landscapes.”
It was the environmental wonder and agricultural richness of the region that led a diversity of cultural groups to settle there. For instance, in the 1890s several plantation owners fretted over the declining work force and looked to Italy for a solution. Arkansas’s 11,000-acre Sunnyside Plantation brought Italians to be sharecroppers. Arkansas planters similarly brought Chinese to the Delta. Most contracted to work for five years, many relocating or changing occupations after being liberated from their farming obligations.
Though the largest percentages of residents are Black African Americans and White Anglo-Saxons, the region also has substantial populations of people of Jewish, Chinese, Lebanese, Syrian, Italian, Greek, and Mexican ancestry. One can observe small Chinese groceries in many Delta towns, the large presence of Italian families and traditions throughout Mississippi and Arkansas, and the wonderful assimilation of ethnic foodways such as Delta tamales. Probably brought to the Delta by Mexican
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
The Mississippi Delta
immigrants instead. For a brief time during the Reconstruction period, convict labor was used to clear thousands of acres, though this scandal-ridden lease system was outlawed in 1890. Later, African- American laborers accomplished most of the difficult task of clearing the forests. William Ferris in Blues from the Delta quoted blues singer Jasper Love talking about his work in the 1930s. “Times was so
Mogiitiaciccam «(ough we couldn't cut it with a knife, man,”
PO ROUNALEam vecalled Love. “Plowing four mules.... Mada ceaae {iitting them stumps and that plow kicking Maem = you all in the stomach. I had to get up
PRA ee = acound three in the morning by a bell. The bell rang two times. First time you get up. The second time, be at the barn. Not on your way, at the barn.”
The fertility of the Delta has led to some pretty harsh working conditions. Wiley Cochral, who was born in 1925, grew up as the son of a sharecropper, working with his father, mother, and siblings, farming on halves. By the fall of 1947 — thirty-three years after moving to the Delta — his father was able to buy 100 acres of land and an old house in Stephensville in Sunflower County. A White man, Cochral’s explanation about sharecropping and his feeling toward the arrangement speak for many who farm as sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta:
Farming on halves, you give the
y
hy H
~<a
~
eee ee
One of the few remaining traditional Southern occupa- A church official stakes out the boss man half of the crop to start tional crafts in the Delta is the making of gourd or tiered baptismal area in the Ouachita River with. You work it, then you take wooden birdhouses. Atop tall poles near farm buildings, in Monroe, Louisiana. the other half. Whatever you owe they lure purple martins, which every day eat their Photo © Susan Roach him, you pay it out of your half. weight in mosquitoes. Photo © Maida Owens Not his half. His half is give to him. Automatically. Your half, whatever farm workers who came to earn a living in the cotton you owe him. If you owe him sixty dollars, you fields, tamales now are made, sold, and eaten by Whites pay him the sixty dollars out of your half. And a and Blacks, farm laborers and plantation owners. lots of times that half, you didn’t get your half With the growing settlement of the area, the landscape when you come to that. Cause they didn’t give it to began to change, most drastically with the stripping away you. I don’t know how that worked. They would of the hardwood forests and the drainage of the swamps. say you got so and so. They could add anything Slaves were used for the cruel and dangerous work of they want. And so that’s the way it was. No, they swamp drainage, until holders of large acreage refused to wasn’t always honest. They wasn’t no way in the risk valuable slave property and began hiring Irish world. Tom, there wasn’t no way in the world for
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE 15
The Mississippi Delta
them to be honest. People finally realized. Some- body got smart. It wasn’t right to start with. They figured you owed him half of it.
You want to know the truth about it, at the end of the year, the Boss man gave you what he wanted you to have. The big man bought this land. They give nine dollars an acre to fourteen. That’s all they give. And they bought it. And then the slaves. I’ve always been a slave myself. I call myself one of them. Everybody was slaves that worked in the damn fields.
Daniel, Pete. 1977. Deep'n As It Come: The 1927 ana River Flood. New York: Oxford University Press. Reprint 1996. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.
Dunbar, Tony. 1990. Delta Time: A Journey Through Mississippi. New York: Pantheon Publications.
Faulkner, William. 1942. Go Down, Moses. New York: Random House.
Ferris, William. 1979. Blues from the Delta. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday.
Hamilton, Mary. 1992. Trials of the Earth: The Autobiography of Mary Hamilton. Edited by Helen Dick Davis. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Lemann, Nicholas. 1991. The Promised Land. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Lomax, Alan. 1993. The Land Where the Blues Began. New York: Pantheon Books.
National Park Service. "Stories of the Delta." Findings of the Lower Mississippi Delta Symposium. Lakewood, Colorado: National Park Service.
Oliver, Paul. 1984. Blues Off the Record: Thirty Years of Blues Commentary. Tunbridge Wells, England: Baton Press. Reprint 1984. New York: Da Capo Press.
Percy, William Alexander. 1973. Lanterns on the Levee. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Spitzer, Nicholas R., ed. 1985. Louisiana Folklife: A Guide to the State. Baton Rouge: Louisiana Folklife Program.
Taulbert, Clifton Lemoure. 1997. Watching Our Crops Come In. New York: Viking.
. 1989. Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored. Tulsa: Council Oak Books.
Titon, Jeff Todd. 1977. Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural Analysis. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Welty, Eudora. 1946. Delta Wedding. Boston: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Whayne, Jeannie, and Willard B. Gatewood, eds. 1993. The Arkansas Delta: Land of Paradox. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.
16
Many sharecroppers, including Cochral’s father James, initially had come to the region to clear timber. Logging operations continued until the early decades of this century.
As the powerful Mississippi River cuts through this peculiarly American region, it both gives and takes away. Formed by regular flooding, the region owes its existence to the building of levees, yet another testimony to the legacy of work in the Delta. Still, however, the region sees flooding regularly, floods that are rarely matched in the devastation they bring. Bluesman Charlie Patton, once a resident of Dockery Plantation just east of Cleveland, Mississippi, chronicled the Delta experience with a poetry rivaled by no one. His “High Water Blues,” a song depicting the vicious 1927 flood, asserted to all the reality of life in the rich alluvial plain of the Delta:
Lord, the whole ‘round country, Lord! river has overflowed
You know I can’t be stayin’ here; I’m — gotta go where it’s high, boy!
I was goin’ to the hilly country, ‘fore they got me barred.
Just a few years later, in 1930, Charlie Patton entered the studio to record another lament of nature’s wrath, “Dry Well,” a song that depicted the 1930 drought. Seen together the two blues songs suggest the ebbs and flows of the Delta’s past and present, the pattern by which natural forces have created a rich and diverse region that has been both blessed by wealth and powerful expression, and also burdened by human suffering and despair.
Way down in Lula, (hundred an’ ten heat?) Lord the drought come an’ caught us an’ parched up all the trees.
Tom Rankin is a photographer, folklorist, and Associate Professor of Art and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of Sacred Space: Photo- graphs from the Mississippi Delta, Deaf Maggie Lee Sayre: Photographs of a River Life, and Faulkner’s World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
The Mississippi Delta
At Home in the Delta
Deborah Boykin
While the fields of the Delta offer little contrast, the same cannot be said of the lives and homes of its people.... Still, there are similarities across class and race lines, and nowhere are these similarities more evident than in the gardens, homes, and kitchens of the Delta.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
last, on growing things. Most of the land, and much of
the time and energy of the people, are given over to crops, whether cotton or catfish. Mile after mile of fields stretch between small towns with names like Panther Burn, Alligator, and Louise. Interminable plant rows or
at, shimmering catfish ponds extend from road to
horizon. Turnrows — the lanes of hard-packed dirt where drivers turn cultivators or cotton pickers — are all that separate one field from another. The landscape is vast, symmetrical, and hypnotic. From the deep greens of summer to the browns and greys of harvest time, the fields change only with the seasons.
While the fields of the Delta offer little contrast, the same cannot be said of the lives and homes of its people. Wealth and poverty exist side by side, with very little middle ground. Planters whose elegant homes are sur- rounded by formal gardens may have neighbors who live in weathered frame houses with swept yards and tire planters. Still, there are similarities across class and race lines, and nowhere are these similarities more evident than in the gardens, homes, and kitchens of the Delta.
There are some distinctions to be drawn between the gardens in town and those in the country, as well as between the spaces created by Black gardeners and those of their White counterparts. Flower gardens in town are more likely to be formal, for instance, and confined to back yards. These gardeners plant flowers to use in arrange- ments indoors as well as for enjoyment outdoors. Rural gardens more often have flowering plants in the front yard and vegetables in the back. Rural Black gardeners are more apt to extend their garden space to the front porch, using a variety of containers. These are stylistic variations for the most part, though. The function of gardens in the Delta is much the same whoever plants them.
For most people in the Delta, the garden is an extension of living space. Summer heat is completely democratic, sending planters, field workers, and merchants in search of shade and a cool breeze. In the days before air condition- ing, they would all seek refuge from the heat in their gar- dens and on their porches. Even now, the warmer months find many Delta families taking meals, sitting and visiting, or entertaining guests in their gardens.
Gardens in the Delta tend to be lush, tightly planted, and enclosed. Sometimes the enclosure is a clipped privet hedge. Formal gardens may be surrounded by hairpin wire fencing or homemade picket. Sometimes the homemade
T: Mississippi Delta is a region that depends, first and
17
The Mississippi Delta
In Southern Black folklore, the b protecting the home by trapping evil spirits within the colorful bottles. Though scarce today, bottle trees are still created for their artistic appeal. Photo by William Ferris, University of Mississippi Special Collections
Ls - ottle tree was a means of
ae
Maa (ep
to the pressure cooker sh@juses Tes
fencing is more eccentric, incorporating a variety of found materials. In any case, the purpose of the fencing is to enclose the space while allowing air to circulate. Gardenias, four o’clocks, honeysuckle, and magnolias provide frag- rance in the late afternoon and evening. Broad-leafed plants like elephant ears, cannas, and ginger may grow in beds alongside ferns and castor beans. Other plants are placed in containers, perhaps as a nod to the unpredictable weather of the region: a container can be moved under cover when there’s too much rain or closer to a hose during a summer dry spell. More than likely, though, Delta gardeners use containers and other items — functional, decorative, or both — to create a space that reflects a personal aesthetic. The more formal the garden, the more common are matching containers, such as urns made of molded con-
18
Louisiana, works with the insegg
Yard decor inthe Delta@often shows creative improvisation with mundane objects to break the OO ARCO AN ara a ent
crete or purchased half-barrels. Decorative pieces may include concrete statuary, often figures of small animals. Lawn furniture usually consists of a matched set and 1s made from wrought iron and painted.
Other gardeners like to improvise. They create planters from old enamelware, paint buckets, or tires. They decorate their gardens with painted plywood figures, whirligigs, or painted rocks. In rural yards and gardens, larger, free- standing decorations such as bottle trees break the monot-
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
The Mississippi Delta
ony of the landscape. For example, travelers on Highway 61 approaching Ergemont, Mississippi, are sometimes sur- prised to see several large, welded-metal dinosaurs on the horizon. They are the work of a local resident who made them “to give people driving through something to look at.”
Many Delta gardeners give as much thought to the aesthetics of their yard and garden space as they do to their homes, probably because the two are inextricable. Wedding receptions, barbecues, family reunions, parties, and other social events in the Delta are very likely to take place out- side. And there is no shortage of social life in the Delta. Entertaining is considered an art form, and Delta women, both Black and White, absorb a complicated set of customs and recipes from their relatives and neighbors as they grow up. Delta homemakers take pride in a tradition of hospi- tality that many see as having roots in plantation life.
Three Delta cookbooks provide some insights. Gour-
iM
met of the Delta, first published in 1958, is a collection of recipes prepared by the Women’s Auxiliaries of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Leland, Mississippi, and St. Paul’s in nearby Hollandale. The introduction describes the Delta as a region settled by the sons of wealthy planters of Virginia, Ken- tucky, Tennessee, and South Carolina. They came ... to further their fortunes in new land. From these landed, cultured people descend many of the present Delta inhabitants.... Many have known the hospitality and graciousness of Delta hostes- ses.... It is our hope ... in compiling the recipes of our own and those of our many friends for dis- criminating hostesses everywhere that we, in our small way, will be the means of help to preserve one of the traditions of the “Delta Way of Life.’ In 1972, the Junior Charity League of Monroe, Louisi-
~ close the filing completely within the dough. Tie the ends or fold. Place in a steamer rack above water ina —
To prepare filling: Put cooking oil and meat half large pot. Place the wrapped tamales loosely to allow
vegetables (onions, bell pepper, celery, lots, green onions), fresh or frozen Servings: Approximately 25 tamales
Cheese Straws
1/2 Ib. butter
1 Ib. cheddar cheese, 1/2 sharp, 1/2 medium — 3. cups plain flour, sifted
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. red pepper
2 tsp. baking powder
Cream butter and grated cheese. Add dry ingredients and beat until very soft and creamy. Squeeze through cookie press into 4" lengths
on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350° for 13 to
covered with water ina skillet. Cook until the meat is soft enough to shred. Meat may be prepared ahead of time or the day before. Using broth from the cooked meat, soak the dry chili peppers until they are
15 minutes, checking that they do not burn. —Recipe from Mrs. John Gannon, Greenville, Mississippi
Southern-Style
Sweet Potato Pie
10" unbaked pie shell
1 medium-sized sweet potato 1/2 cup real butter
11/2 cups sugar
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
the steam to circulate. Steam for 45 minutes to an hour, or until masa dough doesn’t stick to shuck. Test the tamale in the center for doneness.
—Recipe by Irma Rodriquez, Ferriday, Louisiana
1 Ths. flour
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 eggs
7 02. can evaporated milk
Bake potato at 350° for 20 minutes (or until done). Remove the skin, and while the potato is hot, mix it with the butter, flour, and vanilla. Add milk, sugar, and eggs and mix well. Pour into the pie shell and bake at 350° for approximately 45 minutes. Servings: 6
—Recipe by Lucinda Cusic, Leland, Mississippi
19
The Mississippi Delta
ana, looked to similar roots in the introduction to The Cot- ton Country Collection:
The plantations along the river and the bayous were almost entirely self-sustaining, raising their own food, making their own clothes, building their homes from the materials in the forests. Plantation chatelaines and their cooks using the unusually lavish gifts of nature and the ideas of many root sources developed a style of cooking distinctive in its heritage and delicious in its nature.
This tradition of hospitality transcends stereotypes of planter aristocracy and the “Old South.” Kathy Starr’s Soul of Southern Cooking, published in the late 1980s, offers the perspective of an African-American homemaker in the Delta.
It was a must that simple foods make a deli- cious meal. My grandmama, even today, can tell you stories of how proud she felt of her sister, Malinda, who could walk up out of the cotton field, find company sitting on her steps, take a shelf of nothing and make the best meal you ever tasted. There’s a long tradition of making good food out of nothing in my family, who have lived in the Mississippi Delta since it was first settled and cleared for growing cotton in the mid-1800s.
The kitchens of the Delta, like the gardens, are similar in many respects. Women in the Delta take pride in setting a generous table and have definite ideas about what is ap- propriate for a given type of meal. Table settings may vary according to custom and income, but whether a table is set with heirloom silver or an assortment of plastic containers, there will be an abundance of food. Kathy Starr writes about her grandmother’s Christmas dinners in Hollandale:
The holiday table is never considered complete if you can’t fill up at least one separate table with food [including] baked turkey, baked duck, baked ham, dressing with giblet gravy, potato salad, cranberry sauce, chow-chow, mustard and turnip greens, corn bread, yeast rolls, coconut cake, jelly cake, caramel cake, pecan ples, sweet potato pies, ambrosia and fruit cake.
The women from St. Paul’s Episcopal would agree. Their menu for a Christmas dinner includes “baked turkey with oyster dressing, rice with giblet gravy, eggplant cas- serole, English peas, candied sweet potatoes, cranberry jelly, a tray of homemade pickles and relishes, hot rolls, ambrosia, pecan pie and white fruit cake.”
These Delta women of different generations and dif- ferent races share similar attitudes toward homemaking. Their gardens and kitchens are characterized by abun- dance. Flower beds and planters are crowded with blooms, tables are loaded with food, decorative elements range from flower arrangements in formal living rooms to bottle trees in rural yards. Much of the social life in the Delta, from garden receptions to house parties to fish fries, is centered in the home. Many of the traditions associated with homemaking in the Delta may appear to have their roots in plantation stereotypes, but when foodways, gar- dening traditions, and the aesthetics of homemaking are compared across class and race lines, common traits emerge. The lush gardens and highly decorated homes in the Delta embody a need to create a personal space in an impersonal landscape. Traditions and conventions related to homemaking offer a predictable framework for a society in which much depends on the unpredictability of nature.
Deborah Boykin has been the Mississippi Arts Commis-
sion’s Folk Arts Director since 1990. She has worked for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, serving as Cur- riculum Specialist for the Choctaw Culture Early Education
Hemphill, Marie. 1980. rae Floods and Faith: ie Hector GSoC Vc 1844-1976. Indianola, Mississippi: Sunflower County Historical Society.
Junior Charity League. 1972. The Cotton Country Collection. Monroe, Louisiana. N.p.
Rushing, Felder, and Steve Bender. 1994. Pass Along Plants. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
St. John's Women's Auxiliary, Leland, Mississippi, and St. Paul's Women's Auxiliary, Hollandale, Mississippi. 1958. Gourmet of the Delta. N.p.
Starr, Kathy. 1989. The Soul of Southern Cooking. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
and Adult Education programs and as Director for the Up- ward Bound program. She also has done documentary fieldwork with Choctaw basket makers and traditional dan- cers. Boykin holds a B.A. in folklore from the University of Alabama and has completed course work for an M.A. in political science from Mississippi State University.
20 SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
The Mississippi Delta
“Willing to Take a Risk’: Working
In the Delta
Susan Roach
ictator and definer of the Delta, the Mississippi River
provides the fertile flood plain that makes possible the
majority of traditional, regional occupations in this predominantly rural area. Now open and flat with blurred timber on the horizon, the Delta landscape with its resources of rich “buckshot” dirt, waterways, timber, and gas features farming- and river-related occupations, which exhibit a complex of techniques, customs, and modes of expressive behavior typical of occupational folklife: raising cotton, soybeans, rice, cattle, and catfish; crop dusting; commercial fishing; lock operations; and riverboat work. Floods, chemicals from the air and water, insects from mosquitoes to boll weevils, dangerous, expensive technology, and debt all pose risks to life and livelihood and are echoed in Delta occupational narratives.
The river itself gave rise to major occupations such as
riverboat work and river and flood control. Riverboat work — earlier on steamboats and on today’s towboats — has always required a wealth of informally learned occu- pational knowledge: of complex, traditional jargon and operating techniques associated with the river; of specific boats and their parts; of duties of each job; and of river- boat crafts. For example, a deckhand makes a “possum” — a braided rope bumper — to cushion the boat when it docks or ties up to a lock wall. Sometimes living on the boat for thirty days at a time, riverboat workers also share stories, songs, and jokes about river work (Sandmel 1990:10-11). Lock and dam operators, who maintain appropriate water levels in river channels, may share riverboat lore and learn much of their job traditionally.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
complex operation of the machinery and large crew was coordinated by a press caller to pace the work and prevent injuries. Photo © Gene Cloinger
Long-time press caller John Warner of Rayville, Louisiana, shows a cotton press that compacted loose cotton into large bales until the 1980s. The
Because of the threats of flooding and malaria, the flat, rich flood plain along the Mississippi and its tributaries came to settlement and farming later than the adjacent areas. Termed buckshot because it dried into hard black pellets — and gumbo when it was wet, because of its stickiness — Delta topsoil, laid down by centuries of flooding, was “such perfect soil for raising cotton that people considered it worth the risk long before flood control was possible” (Bolsterli 1991:5). In the early 19th century Anglo-American pioneer farmers and slaves settled in the river bottoms. Towns became centers for the lumber industry, which riverboats and railroads helped grow, until no virgin timber remained (Whayne and Gatewood 1993:216). Jewish, Syrian, and Lebanese immigrants entered the Delta mainly as peddlers and later became merchants with businesses such as dry goods. To replace slave labor after the Civil War, planters brought in Italian and Chinese workers. After World War II, these groups opened small groceries and restaurants in such Arkansas towns as Helena, Blytheville, Pine Bluff, and Holly Grove; and in Ferriday, Vidalia, and Monroe, Louisiana. Some Irish also came as laborers and tenant farmers and were quickly assimilated. In 1878, Germans from the Midwest came to the Delta and brought their farming technology; one of the larger groups, led by a Lutheran minister, purchased a 7,747-acre plantation near Stuttgart, Arkansas, which would become the center of the Arkansas rice industry (Whayne and Gatewood 1993:153, 165-66).
Worked by slaves before the Civil War and by share-
21
The Mississippi Delta
Crop dusters fly low, trying “to get down to where the wheels touch the tops of the cotton” to minimize chemical drift, lessening the chance that the chemicals will fall on the wrong crops. Photo © Maida Owens
croppers and paid laborers after the war, large tracts of cotton grew even larger with the advent of mechanized, corporate farms. Delta planters traditionally have taken mainly a supervisory role: giving orders, arranging loans, doing the paperwork, absorbing the profit and loss, risk and worry. However, some planters also grew up working in the fields, plowing, chopping, and picking cotton. Along with their work in the home, many Delta women and children also did farm work. Liddy Aiken, an African- American woman from Wheatly, Arkansas, summed up
the work ethic in 1938 when she was sixty-two: “We farm.
I done everything could be thought of on a farm. I ploughed some less than five years ago.... I learnt to work. I learnt my boys to go with me to the field and not be ashamed to sweat. It’s healthy. They all works” (Whayne and Gatewood 1993:141).
Lake Providence, Louisiana, planter Grady Brown relates the daily routine of his boyhood on his father’s Panola cotton plantation and the typical changes wrought on these traditions by growing mechanization:
When we grew up, we were able to walk behind a plow at probably six or seven.... We were tall enough to reach up and hold the handles.... Daddy gave us all a mule and plow and put three or four of us in the field, and we just plowed the same cotton field every day. We had ninety-five tenant families on the farm.... They used to ring a big bell up on the mule barn and all the hands would be at the barn catching their mules.... They all came to work with an old syrup bucket, and that was their dinner. They would carry some peas and what they called hoe
22
cake.... This went on for four or five years, and then the tractors came about the starting of the war, 1942-44, and then we switched over to tractors, and the first year we ... lost forty families. They migrated to Dallas, or Chicago, or California. And when I came home in 1961, we had about twelve or fifteen families living on the farm.
Cotton also generated work in cotton gins, compresses, and crop dusting. Illustrating the importance of versatility and on-the-job learning, John Warner, from Rayville, Louisiana, began as a water boy at a local compress in 1937 and advanced to calling the press from the 1950s to the 1970s, when he was finally named foreman — the first African American in the region to hold the position. Undoubtedly his promotion to foreman resulted from his twenty years as the press caller, when he would shout instructions and sing blues work songs to pace the monotonous yet dangerous activity of the compress. These songs were patterned after the work songs from the cotton fields and prison chain gangs. Warner recounts the typical learning process of such jobs: “The older men — they’ Il watch you, and they find out you want to do different things. They would always take the time out and show you and tell you how to take advantage and how to do certain things.” However, the same men might play tricks on inexperienced workers; Warner remembers someone being sent to the office to fetch a cotton saw — a nonexistent tool. Such joking behavior is probably still found around today’s computer-operated compresses.
In the early 1900s, mechanization and larger farm acreage turned Delta farmers to a more efficient method of
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
The Mississippi Delta
fertilization and pest control — crop dusting, or aerial application, the current professional’s term. Having been fascinated by flying in his childhood, Owen Dale Holland and his older brother, from Jones- ville, Louisiana, started dusting their own crops and later developed a family crop dusting business. Crop dusters also learn the specialized language concerning equipment, techniques, and the different jobs of their trade in a traditional manner. And they, too, tell and suffer through jokes. A crop duster for forty-two years, Charlie Davis recalls being teased at his wedding about his survival chances: “When we got married, the preacher asked me what did I do. I said I was in crop dusting. He told my wife that the life span of a crop duster was two years.”
The public regards crop dusters with some ambivalence. On the one hand, they are “crazy nuts” taking risks and putting poisonous chemicals into the environment. On the other hand, as Arthur Woolson puts it, “You’re almost next to God to those farmers when you're dusting those crops, because upon your efforts depend his success. If you fail, he fails. If you win, he wins.” Holland explains the modern farmer’s plight and the complex, symbiotic relationship of the two occupations, justifying why the crop duster is “willing to take a risk”:
Most of the people don’t understand to begin with why you are aerial applicating. It is simply because they have no background knowledge of farming. They still want to see a farmer in overalls and a pitchfork and a straw hat. Today, with finances and economics, you do now or you don’t get it done. You’ve got to have someone that is qualified to do the job. Farmers are working under a lot of pressure themselves these days. We know that; we have farmed before. And a farmer comes here with that look on his face; you know he is serious. You don’t play with him much; you get very serious with him, and you deal with him from that point on because of his problems. When he comes to get the airplane, he’s got to have help, and you know that, so you take that into consideration.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
Farm crew in a cotton field, Sunflower County, Mississippi. Photo © Tom Rankin
Crop dusting, which in Tallulah, Louisiana, grew into Delta Airlines, also is important for soybeans and rice, which diversified Delta farming during World War II. The popularity and higher price of soybeans caused many farmers to plant even more soybeans during the fifties and sixties; this brought heavy dirt-moving machinery operators from the Midwest, including Mennonites, to level the land further. Many Mennonites such as the community near Lake Providence, Louisiana, stayed in the region, thus changing the cultural landscape as well.
While the flattened land eased cultivation and irrigation, it also increased drainage and flood problems. Flooding is a periodic problem in the backwater areas of rivers which run into the Mississippi. Many stories about floods con- cern destruction of crops, homes, and businesses, and traditions of moving people and livestock to higher ground. Since early farming days, livestock — especially mules and cattle — has been important for the Delta farmer. In some areas range land was open, and livestock even grazed on the levees. However, when floods threatened, local levee boards hired levee guards to watch for drifting debris, water seepage, and sand boils. As an eighteen-year-old guard in 1927, Myles Smith recalls an experience he had one night returning to St. Joseph, Louisiana:
Just as we got into town, a mule had bogged down in this levee right in front of the Masonic
23
G.T. “Bubba” Brown from Lake Providence, Louisiana, operates the Panola Pepper Sauce Plant on Panola Plantation. Produced on the plantation are the pepper sauce and other food
The Mississippi Delta
products, along with cotton and soybeans. Cattle are also raised on the land, illustrating the diversification on today’s plantation. Photo © Susan Roach
Hall, and they was scared the levee was going to break right there, and everybody that could pack a sack was on that levee throwing sacks. I guess that mule’s bones are still in that levee. He went down in there, and there was no way to get him out. They just put sacks in there on top of him.... That was a pretty rough night.
Today’s farmers still maintain herds of cattle with little open range. Calling themselves ranchers, they manifest typical cowboy culture with some characteristics peculiar to the Delta, such as the use of Catahoula cur dogs for round-ups and herding cattle and free-ranging hogs. Stories about the breed’s origins abound in the Delta: one says it is a hybrid of the red wolf and mastiffs brought by DeSoto’s Spanish explorers in 1542, another traces the dog to the Natchez Indian tribe.
Traditionally, Delta farmers also risk huge debts — a recurring theme in narratives. As described by Margaret Bolsterli, the Delta plantation’s peculiar method of farming after the Civil War was based on “indebtedness”:
The landowner borrowed enough money from a bank to make a crop and then lent it to his sharecroppers, most of whom were black, against half the proceeds. He furnished seed, tools, animals to pull the plows, and guarantees of enough money to clothe, feed, and provide medical care for the sharecropper’s family until
24
harvest, when the tenant would be obliged to give the landowner half the crop and then, out of his own half, pay back the money he had “drawn” for his and his family’s expenses. The owner then would repay the bank for his “furnish” loan. If no money was made, the chain of indebtedness was carried over to the next year (1991:6-7).
Contemporary, often corporately owned plantations still rely on banks to finance expensive farm equipment such as $100,000 cotton combines. Even buying the equipment secondhand at traditional farm-equipment auctions requires financing, according to West Monroe, Louisiana, auctioneer Ike Hamilton; he notes that farmers attending must already have arranged their bank loans before the bidding starts.
Also requiring a huge initial outlay is commercial catfish farming, begun in the 1960s and now flourishing in the Delta. It can cost $200,000 — $300,000 to build and stock eight fifteen-acre ponds, to which must be added an annual feed bill of $150,000. Mississippian Larry Cochran, who farmed the same land as his father and grandfather, gave up row cropping his one thousand acres of cotton and soybeans in 1985 to raise catfish. “I remember my grandfather borrowing eighty thousand dollars at the bank for a year to buy his seed and get a few hundred acres of cotton planted. He could feed both his and my dad’s families, and now it costs me sixty thousand dollars a month to feed twenty-three ponds of fish” (Schweid 1992:27).
Catfish farming has had a profound effect on commercial river fishing, which had thrived in earlier decades in the Delta and supplied fish to markets as far north as Chicago. While today’s fishermen still brave the dangers of the river, their markets are decreasing, with only small, independent fish markets purchasing their catfish, buffalo, and gar. Traditional river crafts that have survived to support this endangered occupation include net making, often done by women, and boatbuilding. Commercial products and net companies such as the Jonesville, Louisiana, Champlin Net Co., which builds nets to order, have affected these crafts. Some fishermen who still knit their own hoop nets purchase commercial fiberglass hoops instead of making the older-style white oak hoops. Gill and trammel nets are more often purchased today, but wire catfish traps and wood slat traps are still made by fishermen such as Kenneth Hebert, who learned fishing crafts from his grandfather. Representing what is left of the
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
The Mississippi Delta
Lee's Chinese Grocery in Ferriday, Louisiana, is run by the second generation of the family. Chinese came to the Delta to work on the cotton plantations after the Civil War. With mechanization in the 1940s, many started small grocery stores that have been passed down in families. Photo © 1988, Don Sepulvado
subsistence farmers in the swamps of the Catahoula Lake area, Hebert also raises some wild hogs, hunts, traps, and makes related crafts such as hunting horns for calling dogs. Throughout the Delta, traditional Southern occupational crafts are sparse, reflecting the massive changes both on water and land. Still, gourd or tiered wooden birdhouses atop tall poles stand near farm buildings to lure purple martins, which eat their weight in mosquitoes every day. While the traditional yeoman farms and the aristocratic plantations have faded along with the steamboat, the water, mosquitoes, fertile soil, risks, and rewards remain.
Susan Roach received her Ph.D. in anthropology (folklore) from the University of Texas at Austin in 1986 and her M.A. and Ph.A. in English from the University of Arkansas. Active in documenting north Louisiana folk traditions since 1978, she has curated folk arts exhibitions, published on Louisiana regional folklife, and served as Co-Director of the Louisiana Delta Folklife Project and Field School. Associate Professor of English at Louisiana Tech University, she currently chairs the Louisiana Folklife Commission.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
aes Alive with pleasure! Pm ]
i NA
Works Cited & Suggested Reading
Bolsterli, Margaret Jones. 1991. Born in the Delta. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Daniel, Pete. 1985. Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Roach, Susan, H. F. Gregory, and Maida Owens. 1994. The Delta Folklife Project: An Overview. In The Louisiana Folklife Festival Program Book. Monroe: Louisiana Folklife Festival.
Sandmel, Ben. 1990. Mississippi River Folklore. In The Louisiana Folklife Festival Program Book. Baton Rouge: Louisiana Folklife Program.
Schweid, Richard. 1992. Catfish and the Delta: Confederate Fish Farming in the Mississippi Delta. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.
Whayne, Jeannie, and Willard B. Gatewood. 1993. The Arkansas Delta. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.
Suggested Listening
Afro-American Spirituals, Worksongs, and Ballads. Library of Congress Recording AAFSL3.
Blake, Clifford. Cornbread for Your Husband and Biscuits for Your Man: Mr. Clifford Blake, Sr., Calls the Cotton Press. Louisiana Folklife Recording Series 001.
Mississippi Folk Voices. Southern Folklore Record 101.
Negro Folk Songs from the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Tradition TLA 1020.
Negro Work Songs and Calls. Library of Congress Recording AAFSL 8.
Roots of the Blues. Atlantic SD1348.
25
The Mississippi Delta
n the Delta, folks find | d [i pleasure where they can. They find it in e (h 1) | { country clubs and juke
joints, in glitzy casinos and at kitchen tables, as well as Michael Luster
at ball fields, in deer woods and fish camps. Much of that fun could be viewed as what Smithsonian historian Pete Daniel calls “domesticated violence,” and sometimes the domestication seems on the verge of reverting to the wild. Other times, the fun borders on a parody of gentility. But whether it be the debauched debutantes wading in the fountain at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis on New Year’s Eve, a deep blues juke joint rocking into the night just a stone’s throw from a civic festival, a supper-club “Tribute to the Blues” offered to the Symphony League by a scatting jazzman, or an investment banker shopping at the mall’s Camouflage Shop for his next turkey shoot, there can be little doubt that the Delta offers a playing field rich in both irony and substance.
Perhaps most substantial is the Delta’s role as Amer- ica’s musical Fertile Crescent, one of the places that gave the blues a reason to be and drove Blacks and Whites to rock. With equally good reason the blues might have spontaneously generated in Texas and the Carolina Pied- mont in the years just before the last turn of the century, yet our first and best descriptions of it come from the Mississippi Delta. Blues historian Robert Palmer in his book Deep Blues tells how archaeologist Charles Peabody came to Coahoma County, Mississippi, in 1901 to study the great earthen mounds which the first Deltans built throughout the region as places of power, ritual, and refuge. Peabody hired local Black laborers to excavate the mounds and took note of the songs the men sang as they worked, and he wrote them up for the Journal of American
There can be little doubt that the Delta offers a playing
field rich in both irony
and substance.
26
Folklore. That same year W. C. Handy, a brass band leader from Alabama, heard a young man playing his guitar and singing about going to where the “Southern cross the Dog”: Moorehead, Mississippi, where the two railroads cross at right angles. Handy said he thought it was “the weirdest music I ever heard.”
That weird music, blues, first reached the ears of most Americans beyond the Delta through the composed renditions of Handy and others, but it was with the advent of widespread recording in the 1920s that the original, real music began to be known. This largely rural blues was played on the house-party and juke-joint circuit by men like Son House, David “Honey Boy” Edwards, Robert Johnson, and some of them — like the young Muddy Waters — were also recorded, sometimes commercially, sometimes by song collectors like John and Alan Lomax. These rural blues performers both expressed and gave shape to a music which would prove resilient, influential, and infinitely adaptable. Most of these musicians were singing guitarists who were both heirs to the earlier string band tradition and precursors of things to come. Others were itinerant piano players like Roosevelt Sykes, Memphis Slim, Booker T. Laurey, and Mose Vinson, who worked in a variety of settings from lumber camps to bawdy houses, from night spots to an occasional worship service. Local sounds developed within the Delta often as the result of a single influential individual, and today many of these localized blues can still be heard in the work of Jack Owens of Bentonia, Mississippi, CeDell Davis of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Po’ Henry and Tookie of Rayville, Louisiana.
One of the most influential musicians from this region was Sonny Boy Williamson. Until his death in 1965, he played not only local dates but also on a radio program, “King Biscuit Time,” which still airs each day at noon on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas. Sonny Boy also made fine electrified blues recordings beginning in the late 1940s, first in Jackson, Mississippi, and then later in Chicago, where many of the Delta’s finest bluesmen would make their way. Most recorded for Chicago’s Chess Records, including Mississippians Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, Arkansas’s Robert Nighthawk, and Louisiana’s Little Walter. Each produced records which not only had an impact in Chicago and down-home in the Delta, but which also made the upper reaches of the national rhythm and blues charts in the years between 1948 and 1959. Most influential of all was B. B. King of Indianola,
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
The Mississippi Delta
Mississippi, who began recording for the RPM and Kent labels of Los Angeles in 1951 and was still charting blues records as late as 1992.
King had come to prominence working as a musician and disc jockey in Memphis, (excepting Chicago) the Delta’s capital city. As most of the Delta blues guitarists of the 1950s saw their national record sales drop off at the decade’s end, a new group of stand-up vocalists began to come to the fore, including most notably King’s sometime collaborator Bobby “Blue” Bland. This new movement in the blues was termed soul and combined blues with the phrasing, drama, and message-orientation of the gospel world. Some of its biggest stars like Aretha Franklin and the Staple Singers would come directly from the church and gospel world; others like Arkansas’s Al Green and
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
Henry Dorsey (right) and Wayne “Tookie” Collom of Rayville, Louisiana, have been performing acoustic Delta blues music together since 1986. Photo by Bob Kidd
Louisiana’s Joe Simon would return to the church after years of secular work.
Growing from the twin strains of the amplified Delta blues of the 1950s and the churchified soul of the 1960s are the two sides of contemporary blues in the Delta today. One side, a continued development of the amplified singing guitarist, is exemplified by performers such as Arkansas’s Son Seals, who records for Chicago’s Alligator Records, and a number of artists associated with the Clarksdale, Mississippi-based label Rooster Blues, including Lonnie Shields and the late Roosevelt “Booba” Barnes, as well as Big Jack Johnson and the Jelly Roll Kings. The other side of contemporary blues is known as soul blues and features such post-soul performers as William Bell of Memphis, Louisiana’s Ernie Johnson,
27
The Mississippi Delta
wea ip
Ain’t gonna raise no more ; I'll tell you the reason why | say so.
Well, like raising a good cotton crop, Just like a lucky man shooting dice.
Work all the summer to make your cotton,
When fall comes it still ain’t no price.
(Oh now, Oh help me pick right here,
boys,
Oh yeah, So dark and muddy on this farm.)
| have plowed so hard, baby, Corns have hot all in my hands.
| want to tell you people,
It ain't nothing for a poor farming man.
—James Cotton
Mississippians Tyrone Davis and Willie Clayton, and Arkansas’s Johnny Taylor. These soul blues artists, many of them associated with Jackson’s Malaco label, have brought the blues once again not only to Delta night spots but to the national charts. For example, Johnny Taylor’s hit “Good Love” made the national top ten at the close of 1996.
While the blues has become almost synonymous with the Delta, the region also has had other musical traditions, secular as well as sacred (see Joyce Jackson’s article, ““Like a River Flowing with Living Water’: Worshiping in the Delta,” page 31, on the latter). Both Blacks and
Whites participated in a string band tradition which was manifested in the work of early Black groups like the Mississippi Sheiks and, by way of bluegrass, in such contemporary White groups as Don Wiley and Louisiana Grass. The Anglo-American equivalent of 1950s juke- joint blues is the classic honky tonk sound of Louisiana’s Webb Pierce; honky tonk also merged with that juking blues to form rockabilly, a creolized form most often associated with Memphis’s Sun Record label and its first star, Elvis Presley. But there were many, many young rockabillies who came out of the Delta, including Sonny Burgess and Sleepy LaBeef of Arkansas, Hayden Thompson and Warren Smith of Mississippi, and Louisiana’s Dale Hawkins. Louisiana was also home to Jerry Lee Lewis. He personified a school of piano rockabilly which drew equally on the music of honky tonk pianists like Roy Hall, who worked with Webb Pierce, and the blues players who worked Haney’s Big House in Lewis’s hometown of Ferriday. Rockabilly served as the White road to rock and roll, a hybrid musical form which knew no color but was heavily influenced by Delta players including Black Mississippians Ike Turner and Bo
28
Diddley. Some of the White rockabillies, like Arkansas’s Conway Twitty, Charlie Rich, and Johnny Cash, would return to the fold of country music in the 1960s, joining Black Mississippi country artist Charlie Pride. The Delta continues to produce country artists like Louisianans Tim McGraw, Deana Carter, and such unclassifiable roots performers as Tony Joe White, Kevin Gordon, and Kenny Bill Stinson. Other rockabillies and their followers, including a number of Memphians such as Mud Boy and the Neutrons, the Panther Burns, Alex Chilton, and Big Ass Truck, would push the envelope of rock and roll to produce new, region-based sounds.
The Delta region is also home to a variety of sacred traditions, which provide both uplift and entertainment. From the voice of a mighty church soloist to huge mass choirs to entire congregations, the Delta is still alive with gospel song and even older spiritual sounds. There are quartets with amplified instruments and some Pentecostal churches which rock as hard as any juke joint. It’s no accident that many of the rockabillies came out of the Assembly of God, and it’s sometimes argued that it’s only lyrical content which separates, say, the piano rock of Jerry Lee Lewis from the piano gospel of his preacher cousins Jimmy Swaggart and Gerald Lewis.
One form of Delta recreation that has been both preached against and sung about is gambling. Since the first riverboats plied the Mississippi between New Orleans and Memphis early in the last century, Delta residents have wagered their money on the turn of a card or the roll of the dice. In the 1920s and 1930s small casinos like the Moon Lake Club in Lula, Mississippi, provided both entertainment and literary material to guests like Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner. Most gaming, though, took place at a kitchen table, in the back room of a bar or store, or around a stump or any wall that would bounce a pair of dice or stop a penny. In a few locations, local variants of games evolved, such as the Jonesville poker that folklorist Don Hatley found in the back room of a Louisiana country store. (The store’s owner had modified the basic poker deal to improve the odds for the “house.”) Hatley also heard many tales of the “bean games,” high-stakes poker games which emerged in the 1970s as the new riches of soybean farming increased Delta cash flow. While such games continue, since the early 1990s the emphasis has shifted to the “boats,” riverboat replicas that remain mostly stationary adjacent to mammoth parking lots and brightly lit come-ons. These
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
The Mississippi Delta
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
Eddie Mae's Cafe, above, in Helena, Arkansas, is a place for both blues and a friendly game.
Photo by Deborah Luster
A hunter's garage, left, in Arkansas City, Arkansas, contains a deer decoy, sometimes used for target practice. Photo by Deborah Luster
casinos docked at Tunica, Lula, Vicksburg, and Natchez offer a round-the- clock array of slot machines, card games, roulette wheels, and dice accompanied by cheap food, plentiful beverages, and live music. Many of the casinos feature sound-alike “tributes” to musical stars, or sometimes the dimming stars of yore themselves. They also provide performance opportunities for Delta musicians, includ- ing young rockabillies and veteran bluesmen. And as they did for the writers of the 1930s, the casinos are providing material for the writers of contemporary blues songs, like Little Milton’s “Casino Blues,” that serve to both celebrate and warn of the pleasures and dangers of the game. There has always been another form of game to be found in the Delta outdoors — deep in the swamps, on the levees, even on the ancient mounds. Although William Faulkner found occasional pleasure at the Moon Lake Club, it was in
Delta hunting that he discovered greater inspiration. Actually, in the world of the hunting and fishing camp one could find tales of bear, deer, and turkeys and also many an all-night card game. These camps are the private domain of hunting clubs, many of which feature excellent cooks, superb storytellers, and masters of a host of related
craft skills including decoy carving, game call making,
and the construction of the various traps, nets, and other
equipment the sportsmen use instead of the gadgets advertised by the hook-and-bullet magazines. Many of these camps are extended family affairs, places where the
29
The Mississippi Delta
rituals of the hunt are performed as rites of passage. A young hunter may be smeared with the blood of his first deer, or he may have his shirttail cut off and nailed to the camp wall to commemorate a missed shot. Regardless of the game bagged, the purpose of the hunt — for many — is ultimately to experience nature, to get in touch with a
Little Milton. 1994. ‘ma Gambler. Malaco? MCD7473.
Mississippi Sheiks. 1992. Stop and Listen. Yazoo 2006.
Pierce, Webb. 1994. Webb Pierce: King of the Honky Tonk: From the Original Decca Masters, 1952- 7959. MCA/Country Music Foundation CMF- 0019D/MSD-35500.
Shields, Lonnie. 1992. Portrait. Rooster Blues CD R72626.
White, Tony Joe. 1993. The Very Best of Tony Joe White, Featuring Polk Salad Annie. Warner Archives 9 45305-2.
Various artists. 1996. Before the Blues (three volumes). Yazoo 2015, 2016, 2017.
Various artists. 1993. The Blues: A Smithsonian Collection of Classic Blues Singers. Smithsonian RD 101.
Various artists. 1984. The Blues Came Down from Memphis. Charley 20033.
Various artists. Blues Roots: Mississippi. Folkways RBF 14. Various artists. 1995. /t Came from Memphis. Upstart 022.
Various artists. 1991. The Complete Stax Volt Singles 1959-1968. Atlantic 7-82218-2.
Various artists. 1996. King Biscuit Blues: The Helena Blues Legacy. Blue Sun Records BSCD 2000.
Various artists. 1992. Memphis Rocks: Rockabilly in Memphis, 1954-1968. Smithsonian RD 051.
Various artists. 1997. Southern Journey, Vol. 3: Highway Mississippi — Delta Country Blues, Spirituals, Work Songs & Dance Music. Rounder 1703.
30
part of the human heritage that’s at least 20,000 years old, and to take some responsibility for the meat they eat. Is this sport? For some, but for others it can mean anything from a form of work to a mystical connection to their place in the world. Not all will agree with them, but then little of the culture of the Delta is calculated to garner favor with the outside observer. It exists to give pleasure and meaning to those who call the Delta home. To them, it’s serious business.
Michael Luster earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He is Director of the Louisiana Folklife Festival and host of “Creole Statement,” a weekly
Louisiana music radio program on KEDM Public Radio in Monroe, Louisiana.
Cees, H. F. “Hunting a arse Delta Life.” Unp ish
Guralnick, Peter. 1986. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom. New York: Harper and Row.
Hatley, Don. 1996. “Gambling Money Don’t Have No Home’: Cards and Craps in the Louisiana Delta.” Unpublished paper presented at the Louisiana Folklore Society meeting.
Morrison, Craig. 1996. Go, Cat, Go! Rockabilly Music and Its Makers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Palmer, Robert. 1981. Deep Blues. New York: Viking Press.
Peterson, David, ed. 1996. A Hunter’s Heart: Honest Essays on Blood Sport. New York: Henry Holt.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
The Mississippi Delta
“Like a
River Flowing wit Living Water’: Worshiping in the Mississippi Delta
Joyce Marie Jackson
complex phenomenon. One aspect of its complexity is
that cultures brought there from Africa and Europe interacted with one another despite efforts to keep them separate, and so African Americans and European Amer- icans have assimilated to a certain extent, and adapted similar religious traditions. Yet, though some congrega- tions are now integrated, especially the Full Gospel churches, religious life in the South continues to be divid- ed along racial lines. The assertion that 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in American society is probably as valid today as it ever was. However, the segregated nature of Southern religion is one that African Americans and other ethnic groups chose, in order to worship not only with a sense of dignity and indepen- dence but also in their own style.
This article attempts to examine briefly the richness and diversity of worship experiences in the Mississippi Delta. Looking at oratory, music, ritual, and sacred spaces also helps us understand what Anglo- and African-American sacred folk traditions have in common and where they differ.
|: the view of many people, the American South is a
SINGING THE WORD
The tradition of Southern oratory includes roaring campaign speeches from the back of a pickup truck as well as “fire and brimstone” preaching at a backwoods
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
church revival. The central figure in the religious oratory folk community is the preacher. An indispensable part of his art and skill is to be able to respond to, engage, and raise spiritual energies during the performance of a ser- mon without a written text.
Where the sermon was first chanted, and by whom, are very difficult to determine. Bruce Rosenberg places the background of present-day fundamentalist beliefs and the chanted spiritual sermon in the 19th century by relating them to the Second Great Awakening of 1800-1801. Certainly the Great Awakening ushered in the age of the informal folk preachers in America and did much to modify the image of the clergy. In fact, the clerical profession in general has not been the same since the spiritual services took to the brush arbors and camp meetings.
It is probable that the Great Awakening provided African-American preachers their first significant public exposure; however, their preaching style and long, colorful, narrative prayers had been developed earlier, during the institution of slavery. The chanted sermon style — once held to be altogether European in origin — has historic precedents in several West, Central, East, and South African groups. Because many African cultures emphasize oral tradition, the artful manipulation of “the word” (from precolonial epics of the West African griot to playing the dozens or rapping in the streets) is a highly prized skill among people of African descent. Although both African Americans and Anglo Americans perform the folk chanted sermons — and may go beyond chanting to actually singing — the tradition has been most fully developed in the African-American community.
Timing is a vital factor in the building of the sermon, which normally begins in prose and moves into metrical verse. The rhythm of the lines must be properly maintained throughout the performance for it to be effective, and the congregation’s response, often in terms of call-and- response, plays a key role in the rhythmic structure of the sermon. The preacher’s individual style — his preference for particular melodies, rhythms, formulaic expressions, and themes — continually recreates the tradition.
SONGS OF THE SPIRIT
Another important aspect of worship 1s, of course, music. Spirituals, the sacred folk songs created by enslaved African Americans during the ante-bellum era, are still being performed in their traditional a cappella (unaccompanied) style in many rural African-American churches. Urban
31
The Mississippi Delta
churches have added piano accompaniment as Well as other forms of instrumentation, and spirituals have also been arranged as gospel songs.
Although Anglo- and African-American Baptists in the Delta rarely share their pews, they do share some of their hymns. Common to both churches is the lining-out style of the Dr. Watts and other long-meter hymns. (Dr. Isaac Watts was an 18th- century English Methodist hymn writer.)
Lining-out is a hymn-singing tradition that arose out of necessity. There was a lack of hymn books and an abundance of people who could not read; therefore, one person was designated to “pitch” the song for the whole congregation. Both African and Anglo Americans practice this tradition in different performance styles. In the Anglo tradition the congregation sings almost the exact melody and rhythms of the leader, with some variation from individual singers; in the African-American tradition, the lead voice and congregation overlap melodically and rhythmically and decorate the hymn tunes with various vocal embellishments and moans. This produces an extra- ordinary effect sometimes called surge singing. In many churches this style is still performed a cappella.
Another style of religious music still prevalent today in the Delta is sacred harp, in which a system of four shapes — a triangle, circle, square, and diamond — is employed to designate the musical syllables fa, sol, la, and mi (shape-note singing is also called fasola singing). This system, a popular and effective way of teaching people to “read” music, was an outgrowth of the New England singing school movement and the Great Awakening. Published in Philadelphia in 1801, William Little’s The Easy Instructor, or A New Method of Teaching Sacred Harmony introduced the shape-note system to the general public. Later in the 19th century the publication of books employing the shape-note system began to spread south. William Walder’s Southern Harmony (1835) and Ben- jamin White and B.J. King’s The Sacred Harp (1844) have been two of the most widely used.
The Anglo-American sacred harp singing conventions that take place in the Delta are usually all-day affairs, and everybody is expected to participate in these religious social events. What follows the singing is another tradition
32
— “dinner-on-the-grounds,” a communal feast contrib- uted to by all participants. Most of the singing is still done a cappella with the hymns sung first using the “fasola” syllables.
Although shape-note singing has been called White spiritual and White gospel singing, the system was adapted by certain African-American congregations in the South during the 1880s using texts of songs drawn from old hymns, gospel songs, and a few spirituals. There is only one collection of African-American sacred harp compositions, The Colored Sacred Harp (1934) by Judge Jackson.
The African American Shape Note and Vocal Music Singing Convention Directory for Mississippi and Areas of Northeast Alabama was published through the efforts and coordination of Chiquita Willis to “foster and support a network of African-American shape-note music singers and supporters that will facilitate interaction among con- ventions.” In August 1993, nearly 300 people, including delegations from twenty different singing conventions, attended the two-day West Harmony Singing Convention held at Pleasant Grove First Baptist Church in Grenada County, Mississippi. This convention and the work of Chiquita Willis have demonstrated that Mississippi has a much larger, more widespread shape-note tradition than previously thought.
Congregation outside Bethlehem No. 2 Missionary Baptist Church, Shaw, Mississippi. Photo © Tom Rankin
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
The Mississippi Delta
Among the various African-American shape-note singing groups in the Louisiana Delta area are the Winnsboro Senior Citizen Singers and Mr. and Mrs. Orland Johnson, a singing couple from Start, Louisiana. They participate along with other groups, most of whom sing a cappella, in the parish- wide, state, and regional convention and singing schools.
The shape-note singing conventions also led to the for- mation of some a cappella gospel quartets. The Oldham Family from West Carroll Parish in Louisiana is an Eng- lish/Scots/Irish quartet that sings hymns learned in shape- note singing schools with the newer seven-note shape-note system.
A number of African-American quartets in the Delta Started with the shape-note system as well. The Pleasant Star Singers (formed in 1946), one of the oldest a cappella quartets in the Winnsboro, Louisiana, area, still sing with the singing conventions. The Convention Specials Quartet (with members from various Delta parishes), the Mighty Soul Guides, and the Royal Newtown Spiritual Quartet from Monroe can usually be found at church programs and quartet anniversaries.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
Rev. Lionell Wilson leads the “rocking” procession and carries the banner which symbolizes the cross. The table is ornamented with twelve lamps representing the twelve disciples and twelve cakes representing the twelve tribes of Israel. This sacred ritual takes place in the Winnsboro community in the Louisiana Delta region.
Photo © J. Nash Porter
Members of a shape-note singing convention perform at Union Chapel Baptist Church in Monroe, Louisiana. Shape-note singing is a system of notated music commonly using four or seven shapes in lieu of the round notes found in standard European notation. This singing school system facilitates learning the music by note.
Photo © J. Nash Porter
Gospel music has contributed tremendously to the Mississippi Delta region’s unique musical heritage. This new sacred music of the 20th century reflects the concerns of urban life and to a large extent has replaced other sacred styles like the folk spiritual and the Dr. Watts hymn. In the African-American community during the 1920s the gospel tradition began to emerge in small, urban, Pentecostal “storefront” churches, then gradually in Baptist churches. Now the genre has found its way into the sanctuaries of African-American congregations of virtually every religious denomination, including Catholic.
When Anglo-American settlers moved into the Delta, they brought with them their fiddling, ballad-singing, and sacred music traditions. Their gospel music can be found in performances of gospel quartets, family and community groups, and country and bluegrass bands. Many of these styles are rooted in the shape-note singing tradition.
Though country and bluegrass music differ in their themes and instruments, bands from both genres usually perform sacred songs. You can also find an occasional sacred instrumental band in the Delta. Rev. Gerald Lewis,
33
The Mississippi Delta
who grew up in Ferriday, Louisiana, plays gospel piano in his Pentecostal Band and built a ministry in several rural
biblical example set by John the Baptist baptizing Christ in the Jordan River.
African-American Ser University of Pennsylvania Press.
Ellington, Charles Linwood. 1969. The Sacred Harp Tradition of the South: Its Origin and Evolution. Tallahassee: Florida State University.
Jackson, Joyce Marie. 1995. The Changing Nature of Gospel Music: A Southern Case Study. The African American Review 29 (2):185-200.
. 1981. The Black American Folk Preacher and the Chanted Sermon: Parallels of a West African Tradition. In Discourse in Ethnomusicology II: A Tribute to Alan P. Merriam, ed. Caroline Card et al. Bloomington: Ethnomusicology Publication Group.
Jackson, Judge. 1992. The Colored Sacred Harp, For Singing Class, Singing School, Convention and General Use in Christian Work and Worship. Montgomery, Alabama: Brown Printing.
Olsen, Ted. 1991 and 1992. The Voices of the Older Ones: The Sacred Harp Singing Tradition in Calhoun County, Mississippi. Mississippi Folklore Register 25 and 26.
Rankin, Tom. 1993. Sacred Space: Photographs from the Mississippi Delta. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Rosenberg, Bruce A. 1988. Can These Bones Live?: The Art of the American Folk Preacher. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Staten, Annie, and Susan Roach. 1996. Take Me to the Water: African American River Baptism. In The Louisiana Folklife Festival Program Book. Monroe: Louisiana Folklife Festival.
Sturman, Janet. 1993. Asserting Tradition: Building and Maintenance of African-American Baptist Rock Ceremony in Northeast Louisiana. Louisiana Folklife 27:24-32.
34
churches in Swartz, Louisiana. His cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley, and Jimmy Swaggart took that small-town background and musical skill to the top of the rock and roll, country, and television evangelism fields.
SACRED RITUALS Rites of passage such as birth, death, and marriage mark a change in a person’s socioreligious position. Baptism in the Delta region, a symbolic ritual of puri- fication and initiation, is a significant rite of passage. As late as the 1950s, river submersion was common in both African- and Anglo- American Protestant churches but continues today primarily among African Americans.
Nowadays, after their week-long annual revival, Rey. L.D. Oliver, pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church in Monroe, Louisiana, and Rey. Roosevelt Wright, Jr., pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church, gather their congregations together for the river baptism. In this setting the old, traditional spirituals such as “Take Me to the River,” “I Know I’ve Got Religion,” and “Wade in the Water” are sung. Rev. Oliver works to remind other area ministers and youth about their heritage of river baptism from the
Rituals involving immersion in bodies of water are also prevalent in traditional African religious ceremonies. They are symbolic of purification, washing away evil and healing the physical as well as the spiritual being. The ritual act of | immersion carries the hope of renewal and freedom, ideas that have driven African-American spirituality.
The ministers in Rayville and Alto still take their congregations to the nearby Beouf River, and in Monroe the Ouachita River at the Foot of Pine Street has been used for several generations. This sacred place is called by the elders of the community the Old Burying Ground, an appropriate name for the place of ritual baptism in which “the candidate is symbolically buried in Christ, sins are washed away, and one is raised up to walk in newness of life.”
Another sacred ritual that takes place in rural African- American Baptist churches in northern Louisiana is the Easter Rock ceremony held on the eve of Easter Sunday. In this ritual the elders sing some of the old traditional spirituals such as “Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In” and “King David.” The songs are sung in a chant-like manner, as the participants move counterclockwise with circular rocking movements around a table placed in the middle of the church floor. Dr. Watts and other long-meter hymns such as “I Know the Lord Will Answer Prayer” and “I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry” are also very prominent in the context of the Easter Rock. The congre- gants dress in white, and the leader carries a circular ban- ner representing the cross. The table is decorated with white tablecloths, and twelve lamps and twelve cakes, representing the twelve disciples and twelve tribes of Israel. The Easter eggs on the table symbolize new birth.
This ritual clearly has African and Caribbean antece- dents; there are many accounts of sacred circular dances throughout the African Diaspora. Some of the elderly Delta participants recalled their parents remembering the tradition as pre-dating the Civil War. The “rock” had vanished for awhile, then certain individuals became interested in the history and began to revive the tradition. The ritual has been passed on by the Addison family for many generations. Now Hattie Addison coordinates the Winnsboro Easter Rock, and people from various congre- gations in the area participate. The Original True Light Baptist Church, pastored by Rev. J.L. McDowell, is ideal for the “rock” because its wooden floors contribute to the percussive effect, and movable pews make room to “rock”
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
The Mississippi Delta
in a circle. The whole ceremony is done a cappella; only hand clapping and foot stamping accompany the songs. Easter Rocks were once held around Ferriday, Louisiana, in Clayton and Sicily Island; however, those have not been organized in the last few years.
SPIRITUAL SPACES
The religious experiences of many people are tied to specific places where rituals are performed. Some people also construct personal sacred space to their own specifications.
On Old U.S. 61 in Kings, Mississippi, just outside of Vicksburg, one man’s sacred space has been under con- struction for several years. Rev. Herman Dennis is spread- ing the word of God not only through his spontaneous sermons but also through his craftsmanship.
Dennis has decorated Margaret’s Grocery Store (belong- ing to his wife) in red and white brick with large brick columns of varying size. All bear bits and pieces of biblical phrases and messages that travelers can read. He has also placed reproductions of various symbolic designs in very strategic places. For example, on the wall, ceiling, and the sidewalk he has placed the Masonic order symbol of the “G,” which to him represents God.
To the right of the grocery store is a large brick tower where he plans to house the Ark of the Covenant, which will eventually contain the Ten Commandments. Then, he believes, Margaret’s Grocery Store will attract people of all Christian faiths to worship. Dennis believes that God, like himself, is a builder or a “craftsman.” “The Almighty is the greatest architect,” he says, “and I am his assistant.”
These genres of worship in the Delta constantly reunite a region by reminding it of its shared but multifocal her- itage. Worship traditions are shaped by a collective and selective memory. Decisions are made by regarding fundamental and shared values. To participate in tradi-
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
C4 a
The Oldham Family quartet is a sacred English/Scots/lrish group based in the First Church of God in Oak Grove, Louisiana. The group sings hymns learned in singing school with the seven-note shape-note system. Photo © Susan Roach
tional worship traditions is to relive that past and to make it a source of power for the future of the Delta.
Joyce Marie Jackson, an ethnomusicologist and
folklorist, is Associate Professor in the Department of
Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She received her Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington. She has been a Rockefeller Fellow and has produced The Gospel Train: Zion Travelers Spiritual Singers, a documentary recording on the a cappella quartet tradition. Her book, From These Roots, which also focuses on the a cappella quartet tradition, is forthcoming.
Brownlee. MCA 28002. .
The Hawkins Family. 0o-wee Lord, You Have Been Good. LILSIL’s Music, Dallas, Texas.
Hemphills. Home Cookin’. Heart Warming.
Hunter Brothers. 1995. The Ship. DDS.
Lewis, Jerry Lee. In Loving Memories: The Jerry Lee Lewis Gospel Album. Mercury SR61318.
Mississippi Sacred Harp Singing. Southern Folklore 101.
The Pilgrim Jubilees. The Old Ship of Zion. MCA 28010.
Racy Brothers. 1996. Time Out. Ace.
Smith, Mother Willie Mae Ford. Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith. Spirit Feel 1010.
The Southern Harmoneers. He'‘l/ Make a Way. Hot Productions, Inc. HTCD 3701-2.
Swaggart, Rev. Jimmy. The Golden Gospel Piano. Jim R3607.
Tharpe, Sister Rosetta. Gospel Train. MCA 1317.
35
African Immigrant
Support for this
program comes from the Smithsonian Institution Educational Outreach Program.
Metropolitan Washington, D.C.: Building & Bridging Communities
African Immigrant mel diiie
n Somalia, Rukia Hussein
grew up surrounded by
the bounteous expression of buraanbur, a tradition of women’s sung poetry and dance. In the 1960s, she was a leader with her husband in the Somali struggle for inde- pendence. She served as a diplomat during the transi- tion to Somali independence. Mrs. Hussein is recognized by fellow Somalis as a fine poet. When the war in her country tore apart the rich fabric of cultural and social life at home, she found her- self living in the Washington, D.C., area for an indefinite period. Here she uses her intimate knowledge and talents in buraanbur and other expressive arts to do the delicate work of repairing torn relations between Somalis from different families, drawing people together across clan lines. As Somali community scholar Abdirahman Dahir observes, “Buraanbur brings harmony to the community; it brings participation of women from all the clans.” Rukia Hussein and other Somali women in Northern Virginia and Wash- ington, D.C., share the task of organizing occasions that ease the pain of adjusting to a new environment, restore relations, and construct community identity. Through their efforts, Somali women’s poetry, once restricted to women’s circles, has become a source of pride, enjoyment, and solidarity for all Somali immigrants.
Across the metropolitan Washington region, African im- migrants actively redefine their ideas of tradition and com- munity by creating institutions and events that draw on expressive African forms. African-born area residents establish language and culture schools where their Amer- ican-born children learn the social and artistic skills of their ancestral homes. Family and friends come together to cele- brate births, weddings, and other rites of passage. African immigrant entrepreneurs employ their knowledge of per- sonal adornment and of the social needs of their home communities to serve fellow immigrants and other Washingtonians.
As did the collaborative research project that led to the 1997 Festival of American Folklife program African Im- migrant Folklife, this essay explores several cultural dimen-
Culture in
Diana Baird N’Diaye
36
sions: the use made of knowledge, skills, values, and ex- pressive forms brought from home to construct new com- munities and identities; and the new tradition that grows from encounters with groups in the African Diaspora and in American society as a whole that contributes to the rich cultural landscape of the United States.
The Washington, D.C., region has one of the largest and most diverse populations in the United States of immigrants born on the African continent, some 60,000 people. Accor- ding to Bereket Selassie, “The majority have come from the Horn of Africa, more than 30,000 Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Somalis combined, with the largest numbers from Ethiopia and Eritrea. The next largest group, 10,000 to 15,000, are from Nigeria. Substantial numbers from Ghana, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Cameroon, and dozens of other African countries add to the mix of African cultures” (Selassie 1996). They are students, workers, self-employed business people, and their families. Selassie notes that a large num- ber of African immigrants in Washington have come as political refugees. The nation’s capital also is home to African diplomats and professionals serving in embassies, international and nongovernmental organizations, and at academic institutions.
The years from 1965 to the present can be considered the third and fourth waves of African immigration. The first was involuntary, of course, the result of violent sequestra- tions in Africa between the 17th and the 19th centuries. The next wave of immigration from Africa was approximately 150 years ago from Cape Verde and was driven by severe conditions of drought on these islands off the West African coast.
Prior to 1965, most Africans tended to emigrate to the European metropoles which had colonized their lands. In 1965, however, new immigration legislation was enacted in the United States which eliminated the system of national quotas for the Western hemisphere and replaced it with an overall limit of 120,000 immigrants. In 1986 amnesty laws enabled many long-term African residents to regularize their status. But now in 1997, debates recalling those of the 1920s dispute the value or threat of immigration. Proposed immigration legislation is increasingly restrictive.
Neighbors, clients, patrons, and co-congregants of Af- rican newcomers living in the Washington area often in- clude African Americans — the descendants of those who were brought unwillingly from Africa centuries ago, some of whose families migrated from the lower South during the 1930s and 1940s and others who came via the Caribbean
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
and South America. Some (above) Members of Ethiopian long-term local residents and — Christian communities of several their organizations have denominations celebrate Maskal welcomed Africans of the (cross finding) each year at
new diaspora to their Malcolm X Park in Washington, D.C. churches and community Maskal, a tradition of Coptic origin, organizations. Other area commemorates the finding of the residents have been slow to _ ross and announces the new year. embrace newcomers to Photo by Harold Dorwin
neighborhoods they see as
their own. Many African immigrants, like their counterparts from the Caribbean, encounter the dilemma of being pro- jected in the media as model minorities while paradoxically facing challenges arising from anti-immigrant sentiment and resurgent racism.
Culture shock or disillusion, concern over the possible loss of culture, and the desire to communicate their com- munity traditions to a wider public often go hand in hand. Women particularly note the need for children to learn the traditions of their parents’ homeland as part of a good upbringing.
Nomvula Cook, born in Lesotho, came to the United States with her African-American husband:
In 1981 I arrive in the United States. Little do I know that this becomes a turning point in my life. I meet new people, and I make new friends. It doesn’t take me long to realize that I am now swimming in the belly of a new culture. The question is, do I swim or do I sink? I begin to feel the burden of being expected to think and rationalize like an American... The fear of losing my culture and tradition in a
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
(above) Somali women dance to the words and clap to the rhythms of buraanbur at a picnic in Northern Virginia organized by the Washington-area Somali community. Photo by Harold Dorwin
(above) As Texas-born Jackie Kakembo looks on, Don Folden, also an African American, is adorned in traditional clothing by Cameroonian artists Paul Kengmo and Joseph Nqwa at a cultural evening. The educational event was organized by the clothing and home design store African Eye
along with the Palaver Hut, a group founded by Liberian and other African women in Washington, D.C, that helps to make links between communities. Photo by Harold Dorwin
foreign country continues to stay with me.... I begin to feel a tremendous guilt of raising my children in a culture that has no room to accommodate my cultural identity. At this point ... maybe this fear begins to motivate me to be actively involved in collecting, preserving the cultural music and art of Basotho people...
African newcomers to the United States describe a development of consciousness of themselves as members of an ethnic group, of a larger national community, of Africa as a whole, and ultimately of a larger African world that in- cludes African-American and Caribbean peoples. They
Si
African Immigrant Folklife
jeclaal ‘Gacalkii la i siiyey ee guule ii gartaay Gaban markii aad ahayd ee laagu gardaadsanaa Gurbood markaad nogotay ubadkii ka raacaay gees Dugsigana aad aaday guushiina soo hantiday Garaadkaaga iyo aqoontaada gees walbab gaasir ma leh Markii aan gaabshay tii ii gargaartayeey Oo guulahaan tuugay rabbigayga gacanta wayn Giddigeeda noloshaada ha ahaato garabka sare 00 guur marka aad gaarto 00 wiil is-gacashataan Ninka ha guul gullin guryankaaga yaan la maqal Gurboodka ururi gacalkiisa gogol u fidi Go’yaasha u uumi 00 raaxo heer ka gaar Oo gurrac haddii aad aragto gurigiisaba uga guur Gunaanadka iga guddoon gaamur duco gin-giman Golaha aakhirana jannadii ku hayso gogol
My beloved girl, you are a gift from Allah.
You are sweet, bestowed on me by the Victorious One.
When you were a baby and were held on a lap,
When you became an adolescent and took your place among your peers, And went to school and claimed success,
Your intellect and knowledge rounded in every way,
You helped me when | lagged behind,
So | pray Allah the Omnipotent on your behalf.
May your life be lived at the highest level
When you begin to date and are ready for marriage.
Do not nag him, and let not your grumbling be heard;
Open your house and spread mats for his people.
Apply incense at home, and dress and indulge him with pleasure, But if he rewards you with mischief, move out from his home. Accept this conclusion of my bestowing prayers to you:
| wish you paradise in the life hereafter.
Abdhirahman Dahir has been working as a community scholar for the African
Immigrant Folklife Study Project since 1994. He is a Training Coordinator for Lutheran Social Services and a great admirer of traditional Somali poetry.
38
perform these evolving identities through participation in various cultural activities.
For many African newcomers to the United States, their sojourn is temporary; they plan to return to their countries at a later date. Others have decided to live permanently in the United States by becoming American citizens. This de- cision is not taken lightly and without sacrifice. Yusef Ford, associate director of the Ethiopian Community Center, notes that in becoming an American citizen — a move that he hesitated to make for two decades in the United States — he was obliged to forfeit rights to his father’s inheritance in Ethiopia.
A few Africans are able to move between residences on the African and North American continents. Following a Caribbean pattern, some African countries are beginning to permit continued citizenship to emigrants and are even es- tablishing ministries of emigrant affairs. Whether Africans are permanent residents, citizens, or temporary sojourners, they often have the responsibility of sending support to families at home.
As the continental Africans living in the nation’s capital region have increased in number, they have stamped their presence on the ethnic map and cultural calendar of the area. Africans present cultural programs, conferences, and forums about their communities. Akwa Ibom, for example, an organization composed of members from Nigeria’s Cross Rivers State, presents dance and masquerade tradi- tions representing the Efik, Anang, and Ibibio ethnic groups of that region. Some organizations like the Ghanaian group Fantse-Kuo and the Sudanese Association organize by country, region, or ethnic group. Other groups present tradi- tional culture from a pan-African perspective.
Using traditional skills and knowledge, African-born entrepreneurs develop services for immigrants and the community at large: Nigerian-run Oyingbo International Market in Hyattsville, Maryland, is an example, as are tailors, dressmakers, couturiers, textile shops, and hair- braiding salons. Immigrants run weekend schools and camps to nurture cultural identity and transmit traditions to their children. African journalists, talk-show hosts, and disc jockeys feature news, interviews, music, and discussions of interest to the African immigrant community.
Events such as the annual Ethiopian soccer tournament, institutions such as the AME Methodist Church African Liberation Ministry, and “friends” and “sister cities” organ- izations bring together different communities in the Wash- ington area. Community institutions sometimes use tradi-
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
African Immigrant Folklife
tional forms of social organization like tontines — revolving credit and savings societies — other kinds of investment groups, and town associations to get things done.
Some organizations retain close links to embassies, and their programs often center around events in the home country. But many others exist outside the sphere of official contact with their former lands. As communities become more established and populous, organizations become more like those of other American ethnic groups. Community scholar Gorgui N’Diaye notes that twenty years ago, children born to Senegalese parents in the United States were usually sent home to be educated, with the expectation that the entire family would eventually return. At that time, they felt no need for cultural training outside the family. As more Senegalese and their Gambian neighbors have begun to raise their children here, Senegambians have begun to explore organized cultural activities for their young growing up in America.
African immigrants bring to America ideas of ethnic and region-based organizations that were devised when Africans first migrated from rural towns to urban centers in Africa. These patterns of organization continue in the United States. In the greater Washington metropolitan area, the Nwan- nedinamba Social Club of Nigeria, the Asante Kotoko Asso- ciation, and the Ethiopian Business Association are among the many organizations that revitalize traditional norms, values, and civic unity (Olumba 1995).
Political, social, and cultural bridges are gradually being built between continental African and Caribbean commun- ities, who share similar experiences of immigration, accom- modation, and ongoing transnational interests. They recog- nize an identity based on shared African ancestry and the experience of racial discrimination. This growing conscious ness is shared with established African-American commun- ities. These relationships have led Washington’s Mayor Marion Barry to appoint a Commission of African and Caribbean Community Affairs, which is composed of equal numbers of continental African and Caribbean Americans. African-American organizations have formed “sister city” relationships with cities in Africa and the Caribbean. These organizations develop exchange visits between African and American children and adults, sponsor cultural activities, and raise funds for civic gifts — ambulances, computers, etc. The organizations work closely with African and Carib- bean immigrant organizations from their “adopted” regions.
As African expatriates become immigrants, and as immigrants become citizens, they use aspects of traditional culture to maintain connections with their roots, affirm their
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
identity, maintain positive self-images for their children, express their links to other African world people, and assert their unique contribution to their land of adoption.
There is a need for greater understanding of the cultures and experiences of continental Africans living in the United States. Perhaps a continuing annual event, like Brooklyn’s West Indian Day carnival parade or the Latino festival in the District of Columbia, will be invented to mobilize and define African immigrants publicly as a single community. Most importantly, there-is a need for connection and:colla- boration between Africans in America and African Amer- icans, between Washington’s immigrants and its long-estab- lished populations.
Issues of immigrant culture, community, and identity touch close to home for Diana Baird N’Diaye, who directed the African Immigrant Folklife Study Project and co-curates the 1997 Festival program. She was born to immigrants from Guyana and Barbados and is married to African-born co-researcher Gorgui N’Diaye. Diana’s doctoral dissertation is an ethnographic study of the African Immigrant Folklife research and presentation project.
. s
1990. Research Report: The Folklife Study Project. In Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife Program Book. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
Bryce-Laporte, Roy, ed. 1980. Sourcebook on the New Immigration. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Frosch-Schroder, Joan. 1994. Re-Creating Cultural Memory: The Notion of Tradition in Ghanaian-American Performance. UCLA Journal of Dance Ethnology 18:17-23.
Hammett, Kingsley, and Jerilou Hammett. 1997. Life in the Vertical Village. Designer/Builder: A Journal of the Human Environment (February).
Lampere, Louise, ed. 1992. Structuring Diversity: Ethnographic Perspectives on the New Immigration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lemma, Tesfaye. 1991. Ethiopian Musical Instruments. Washington, D.C.
Ofori-Ansa, Paul. 1979. Children’s Games and a Folktale from African Tradition. Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institution.
Olumba, Ann. 1995. “African Immigrant Folklife Study Fieldwork Report.”
Selassie, Bereket. 1996. Washington's New African Immigrants. In Urban Odyssey: Migration to Washington, D.C, ed. Frances Carey. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Stern, Stephen, and John Allan Cicala, eds. 1991. Creative Ethnicity: Symbols and Strategies of Contemporary Ethnic Life. Logan: Utah State University Press.
39
African Immigrant Folklife
Islamic Celebrations in the African Immigrant Communities in Washington, D.C.
Sulayman S. Nyang
global Islam into the American cultural and religious
mosaic. They can be easily seen at the rituals, rites, and celebrations they perform as part of their faith communities and at annual events that reaffirm and revalidate their iden- tities as Muslims. This aspect of Muslim life in the United States is now felt around the country and especially in the greater Washington area, where almost all Muslim coun- tries are represented by their respective embassies and where a small but growing body of immigrant and native- born Muslims now reside. Estimates by local media put the Muslim population in the area between 50,000 and 75,000.
Muslims annually celebrate several feasts now reported in the local press and discussed between Muslims and their neighbors and friends in American society. The three most widely celebrated events among African Muslims are the Eid el-Fitr, Eid el-Adha, and Mawlad el-Nabi. The first feast takes place every year at the end of the month of fasting known as Ramadan. Because they have not yet established religious centers of their own, African Muslims in the greater Washington area usually join other Muslims at various local masjids (mosques) and Islamic centers for the Eid prayers. If they have been able to secure leave from work to celebrate, they also partake in a meal of chicken bought from /alal (ritual expert) butchers, who cater specifically to Muslims. Some pay visits to relatives and friends in the area, while others are hosts or hostesses to other Muslims they have not seen during the year because of conflicts in work schedules and other responsibilities of modern urban life. The second feast, the Eid el-Adha, comes two months and
ten days after the Eid el-Fitr. This celebration is a re-enact-
mmigrants from the Muslim world have introduced
40
ment of Abraham’s offer to sacrifice his son to God. It is also the day after the Mus- lim pilgrims converge at Mt. Arafat as part of their hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. Like the first Eid, this one is cele- brated by prayer at the mosque and by social visits and meals. This occasion is distinctive in its tradition of sacrificing a lamb (or any other animal approved by Islamic law) and sharing the meal prepared from it with neighbors and friends.
The third celebration, Mawlad el-Nabi, centers on the sira (biography) of the Prophet Muhammad. On this occasion African Mus- lims organize lectures and chanting sessions at a local mosque or rented facility. Such celebrations are often acts of devotion by members of local Muslim community organizations connected with African Mushm brotherhoods. These American branches of African Sufi orders
Celebrations in African Immigrant Communities
In Maryland, Sierra Leonean immigrant Muslims pray at the Eid Celebration at the end of Ramadan, 1997. Photo by Harold Dorwin
Lewis, I.M. 1980. /slam in Tropical Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mazrui, Ali A., and Toby Kleban Levine, eds. 1986. The Africans. New York: Praeger.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 1988. /deals and Realities of Islam. London: Unwin Hyman Limited.
Nyang, Sulayman. 1986. History of Muslims in North America. A/- Ittihad (September): 39-47.
_____. 1984. Islam, Christianity, and African Identity. Brattleboro, Vermont: Amana.
Padwick, Constance E. 1961. Muslim Devotions: A Study of Prayer Manuals in Common Use. Oxford: Oneworld Publications.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
African Immigrant Folklife
maintain this form of veneration of the Prophet, but the tradition is frowned upon by members of the Wahabi sect from Saudi Arabia because it is seen as an innovation. During the celebrations, congregations sing poems known as gasidas, composed and written down long ago by African and Arab poets like Shaykh Alhaji Malick Sy of Senegal and other Muslim poets from Mali, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, and Harar in Ethiopia.
Nature & Significance
of Durbar in Ghanaian Societies
Kwaku Ofori-Ansa & Peter Pipim
hanaian traditional rulers sit in state and meet their
people at events called durbars (an Indo-Persian
term for “ruler’s court”). To the accompaniment of music and dance, ceremonies honor their ancestors, re- kindle their bond to the people, revive unity, cleanse the society, and pray for the fruitfulness of the land and the welfare of the people. Beautifully adorned kings, queens, chiefs, and their elders appear in public procession amidst intensive drumming, singing, and dancing. At their destination king and queen sit in state flanked by chiefs and elders, as sound and motion continue around them: drum languages articulate praises; special guests extend greetings and pay homage; gifts are presented.
The Akan people of Ghana organize durbars for the installation of chiefs, kings and queens, and their elders, a tradition that has been carried over to the United States. This year the Asanteman Kuo, an association organized by the Asante, one of the Akan groups in the United States, will hold the third installation of its leadership, an event which happens every three years. During a durbar, the Asanteman Kuohene (chief of the Asanteman association) of the Washington metropolitan area will host members of Asanteman Kuo from Atlanta, Toronto, New York, New England, Montreal, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas. The chiefs and the queen mothers of these Asante associations will appear in traditional ceremonial clothing of hand-woven, hand-stamped, hand-embroidered, and hand-appliquéd cloths accentuated with glittering gold,
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
Sulayman S. Nyang, a tenured professor at Howard Uni- versity’s African Studies Department, was the founding editor of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences. Dr. Nyang has served as Ambassador of the Republic of the Gambia throughout the Middle East and northeast African countries. He is also the author and editor of works such as Islam, Christianity, and African Identity (1984) and Religious Plurality in Africa: Essays in Honor of John Mbiti (1993), which was co-authored with Jacob Olupona.
» STE. Cw. Officials of the Washington, D.C,
Ghanaian community organization Asanteman Kuo were attired in
silver jewelry, and precious beads. Accompanied by drumming, singing, and dancing, they will process under ceremonial umbrellas of brilliant colors.
Symbols of status and authority, the royal paraphernalia reflect a complex array of philosophical, religious, and political concepts, which inform ideals and codes of conduct. The large, colorful umbrellas (akatamanso) represent the protective role and the authority of chiefs and queens. Gold-plated staffs (akyeamepoma) of the chief's spokesmen, or linguists, symbolically depict political ideals. Ceremonial chief stools (ahenkongua) — carried by stool bearers and placed in front of the chiefs — are symbols of spiritual and political unity. Their carved images refer to certain philosophical, religious, and political concepts. Gold-plated ceremonial swords carried by the Council of Elders are traditionally borne by royal messengers and are used in swearing oaths of allegiance during installations of rulers and elders.
Traditional durbars can last a whole day until sunset. Sharing special drinks at these occasions symbolizes hospitality and community spirit. The durbar ends with a
regalia for an inaugural event in 1994 at a local gym in Langley Park, Maryland. Photo courtesy Peter Pipim,
Asanteman Kuo organization
41
African Immigrant Folklife
procession from the public grounds to the chief’s palace, where a libation is poured to honor the ancestors and thank the Supreme Creator. More than just a social gathering, a durbar revives and reinforces loyalty and strengthens the ties and the sense of belonging that bind a people together.
Kwaku Ofori-Ansa, who is from Ghana, is Professor of Art at Howard University. He holds a Ph.D. in folklore
studies. He is also a cultural activist and has been an integral part of the group of community scholar/advisors to the African Immigrant Folklife Project since 1994.
Peter Pipim, an Education Specialist at the National Museum of African Art, is also active in Ghanaian-Amer- ican cultural affairs as an officer of the Akan organization Asanteman Kuo and of the Council of Ghanaian Organ- izations in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area.
Ikeji Masquerade in
New York City &
Ofirima Masquerade
in Washington, D.C.: Research Reports on Two Cultural Adaptations
The term masquerade can refer to a masking performance, a masked performer, or the character embodied by the mask itself. Masquerade is an important mode of cultural expression for several groups from Nigeria. Molly Egondu Uzo researched Ikeji masquerade as it is now performed in the New York City area. Tonye Victor Erekosima researched the Ofirima masquerade as it is performed by the Rivers State Forum in Washington, D.C. The following are excerpts from their research reports.
Ikeji Masquerade Molly Egondu Uzo
n Umuchu in Nigeria, as in most of Africa, “masquer-
ade is exclusively for men. It’s a macho thing,” said
Mr. Victor Emenuga, a member of the Umuchu cultural troupe, based in New Jersey. Mr. Emenuga was addressing an audience at the 1996 Hudson River Arts Festival in Poughkeepsie, New York. The purpose of masquerade can be to entertain, to commend achievers, to chastise evil-doers, to bring messages of hope, peace, or
42
Members of Akwa Ibom, a Nigerian regional organization in the Washington, D.C, area, re-enact a masquerade procession at the 1995 Festival of American Folklife.
impending disaster, to mourn the dead or to receive a special newborn, or to grace a ceremonial occasion like a festival. To these ends, its elaborately created physical presence evokes a great range of feelings, from approbation and appreciation to fear and awe. A good masquerade has admirable human or animal features and is a great dancer, too. Men use masquerade as an outlet for their macho energy. They are strong enough to invoke and mingle with the spirits of the dead, but women are not. Of course, it makes them feel good about themselves, and life goes on. Traditionally, masquerades have the highest level of freedom in a village. You cannot fight a masquerade. You cannot unmask it. And you have no right to say the name of the person under the mask, even if you know who it is. Once under the mask, he becomes sacred, a person used to embody the spirit.
As more Africans make the United States their permanent residence, some adapt their traditional festivals to their new
Photo by Jeff Tinsley, courtesy
Smithsonian Institution
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
African Immigrant Folklife
homes. New Yam and New Year festivals are now common. In addition to dance, food, and pageantry, some festivals feature masquerades. For instance, the Ikeji festival of the Arondizuogu community (one of the Igbo clans in Nigeria) in New York cannot be complete without the Ikeji masquerades. Sometimes adaptation seems the only alternative for surviving. In Igboland there is no one-man masquerade, but we have it here in the United States, thanks to the use of audio cassettes for background music. The Ikeji festival masquerades are among the few that still try to preserve their tradition. But they come out only once a year, in summer. They still uphold their myths. They have only a few hours of Ikeji masquerade in New York, as opposed to four days in Arondizuogu. They don’t have enough skilled drummers to back up their performances, so they occasionally resort to taped music. To avoid lawsuits, they limit open interaction with the audience.
Ofirima Masquerade Tonye Victor Erekosima
he Ofirima (Shark) masquerade is generally staged
by men only. The headpiece that is worn indicates
the kind of masquerade being presented. Members of the Rivers State Forum, an organization named after a province in southeastern Nigeria, staged the Ofirima during their annual outing in Washington, D.C. In the traditional outfit of an appropriately dressed masquerade, the headpiece is a faithful model of the ferocious fish. It was carved by a local resident. The many male dancers who accompany him were also in their proper traditional attire, because every Rivers man living here has at least one such outfit in his possession.
The distinctive style of this dance is a leisurely cadence with broad sweeps of the arms and slow pacing of the feet; this shows opulence, casualness, and a dignified bearing. It is very different from much of the dancing done by the Rivers people’s neighbors. Some say it reflects the slow ebb and flow of water in their geographical setting; others, their history as traders who have trafficked with the outside world for centuries with relative ease.
Audience members in Washington retain the Nigerian practice of informal concourse through the arena where the masquerade was being played, but only an entertainment mask like Ofirima could be performed. The shark is
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
“Masquerades with controversial attributes, like Ogaranya Afo Toro, known for his excesses including oversized private parts, are cautiously avoided,” says Chris Awam, originally from Arondizuogu. “But we will still perform the most au- thentic masquerade in the United States. At least our mas- querades don’t wear socks.” Awam is making fun of some groups whose masquerades are so human that they wear socks. Spirits don’t even have feet. They can float in the air. Socks are very human; they are foreign goods as well. Traditional masquerades would never wear them.
Mary "Molly" Uzo is a Nigerian-born community cultural activist who has researched and presented programs in upstate New York on African masquerade traditions including those of her own Igbo ethnic group from southeastern Nigeria.
ferocious, so an attendant — dabbed with white chalk or kaolin to dispel negative forces — follows it and checks its aggressiveness. As a lead dancer, he wears an eagle feather, the badge of an accomplished member of the Ekine men’s dancing society. He precedes the masquerade, pouring a libation and invoking the ancestors to provide a safe and nimble performance. That day, rich attire and collective spontaneity were shared between the dancers and the audience of Rivers women who enthusiastically joined them. Everyone on the scene left feeling they had participated in a memorable event.
This Ibibio masquerade was danced at the 1995 Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife by members of Akwa Ibom, an organization of area residents with origins in the Cross Rivers State in Nigeria.
Photo by Jeff Tinsley, courtesy Smithsonian Institution
Dr. Tonye Victor Erekosima was born in the Rivers State region of Nigeria and has done extensive research on the Kalabari ethnic group, of which he is a member. He is a scholar and a religious minister and divides his professional time between Washington, D.C., and Nigeria.
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African Immigrant Folklife
Yoruba Naming Ceremony in Washington, D.C.
Diana Baird N’Diaye with Gilbert Ogunfiditimi & Frederick Ogunfiditimi
nless a baby is named within seven to nine days of LJ its birth, according to Yoruba tradition, it will not
outlive its parent of the same sex. This belief underscores the importance of naming and of the cere- mony at which it is done. Soon after their son was born, Mr. Banyole and Mrs. Adiola Adeboyeku of Washington, D.C., telephoned friends and relatives and invited them to the house. Mr. Adeboyeku had already prepared for the occasion on his previous trip to Nigeria. There he had purchased richly embroidered white cloth and had taken it to a tailor in Lagos to have festive clothing made for the baby’s father, mother, and older brother, Babatunde. Husband and wife had already thought about names, and their mothers in Nigeria had also sent their choices. When the baby would visit Nigeria for the first time, his grand- mothers would call him by the names they had chosen.
On the day of the celebration at the Adeboyeku home,
guests arrived from early afternoon bringing money and other baby gifts: layette sets, clothing, and blankets. After about an hour of socializing, the ceremony began. Every- one assembled around a living-room table, which dis- played ritual foods and objects. The family are members of the congregation of the International House of Prayer for All People, and their pastor, Reverend Frederick Ogunfiditimi, officiated. The ceremony began with a hymn. Then the reverend introduced each of the foods and objects to the baby to taste or touch, declaring the sym- bolic meanings of each as he did so. He expressed prayers for the child’s well-being and good character and passed each object around for those present to taste or touch. The baby’s given names were announced to all: the first name, Orobola, means “riches”; the second name, Adeleke, means “We are already higher than our enemies.” Rev. Ogunfiditimi pointed out that if the ceremony had been taking place in Nigeria, it would probably have been held outdoors. The baby’s bare foot would have been touched
a4
At their home in Lanham, Maryland, the Adeboyeku family and their friends greet the newborn with tastes of ritual foods in a traditional Yoruba naming ceremony.
to the ground to guide his first steps in the right direction. Here in the United States this is not part of the ceremony. Singing and bearing candles, Rev. Ogunfiditimi led the tiny newcomer Orobola and his parents and well-wishers to the baby’s bed, where prayers and hymns blessed the room. Poets recited Ewi poetry composed for the occasion.
Guests returned to the living room, as festive foods began to appear from the kitchen.
Friends had cooked fried plantain and two kinds of rice dishes. The Adeboyeku family had prepared goat stew with fufu and egusi. Boiled yams and fowl completed the feast. Throughout the evening, more guests arrived for festive music and dance, which lasted until morning.
Photo © Roland Freeman
Gilbert Ogunfiditimi, African Immigrant Folklife Project community scholar and educational specialist, and Frederick Ogunfiditimi, pastor of the International House of Prayer for All People in the District of Columbia, were advisors to the Center’s World Wide Web exhibition on Yoruba names and naming in metropolitan Washington, D.C.
AUTHORS’ NOTE: This article is an excerpt from an on-line exhibition on the World Wide Web. To reach the entire exhibition, which includes sound and more photographs, go to <http://www.si.edu/folklife/vfest/africa>.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
African Immigrant Folklife
Passing Culture on to the Next Generation:
African Immigrant Language & Culture Schools in Washington, D.C.
Remi Aluko & Diana Sherblom
anguage and culture are inextricably intertwined. Culture is the totality of ways of living built up by a group of people in response to how they see their
environment. And these ways are passed from generation to generation by various means, including language: prose and poetry, written and spoken, in forms like proverbs, riddles, folk tales, jokes, fables, songs, drama, drumming, chants, raps, and other musical media.
People from many parts of Africa have been voluntarily coming to America for quite some time for leisure, busi- ness, and education. Through many of those years, cultural identity was not an issue, because the African commun- ities were transient. Many people did not even come with their families. Many Africans did not want to live far away from home for long. This mind-set is reflected in a Yoruba proverb that says, “Ajo ko le dundun, ki onile ma re’le,” “No matter how pleasant and enjoyable your sojourn abroad has been, you must return home.” And, indeed, most people did.
But in the last couple of decades, more and more Africans have been migrating permanently to the United States. In response to grave economic and political con- ditions in many African countries, they have been making their homes and raising their families in America. The feeling these days is expressed in this Yoruba saying that contrasts sharply to the earlier one: “bi ti aiye ba ba’ni, ni a ti nje,’ “Home is wherever you find life in abundance.”
Immigrants settling in America have had to deal with a sense of cultural dislocation and shock as a result of being immersed in a varied and very different cultural milieu. In response, immigrant communities of Nigerians, Ghana-
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
ians, Ethiopians, and others express a common sentiment for passing on their culture to their children, for the sake of individual and group identity and for posterity.
One way they have begun to carry out this mandate is by forming cultural associations and, more recently, language and culture schools. For many African adults, of course, this is a much more formalized way of passing on the culture than they experienced themselves. In Africa, cultural training occurs daily in many aspects of life and through oral traditions. Members of African social asso- clations exert communal efforts to form language and culture schools in response to their shocked realization that their children — those born here and those brought from Africa — will grow to be part of the melting pot of dominant American culture. Associations like the Isokan Yoruba Language Institute teach the Yoruba language to interested children and adults. The Ethiopian community organization offers a language and culture camp to child- ren in response to parents’ requests; Hermela Kebede, an officer of that organization, says parents ask for classes in Amharic so their children will be able to communicate when visiting relatives in Ethiopia. “Even here, we feel they need to know their own culture; they need to show part of who they are,” she explains. Other language and culture schools were born from an individual’s vision. For example, Remi Aluko (co-author of this article) founded and directs Camp-Africa, a summer day camp for children that provides cultural enrichment through formal and informal instruction in languages, history and geography,
A student at the Ethiopian summer school explains geometric formulae in Amharic. Photo by Harold Dorwin
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African Immigrant Folklife
(above) American-born children
in Washington, D.C, learn dance and drumming at a school directed by Assane Konte, a Senegalese dancer and educator.
Photo by Harold Dorwin
(right) Instructors at a Saturday school sponsored by the organization Isokan Yoruba use teaching strategies they acquired as educators in Nigeria to teach the Yoruba language. Photo by Harold Dorwin
music, games, cooking, storytelling, drama, crafts, and etiquette.
Parent-teacher groups run after-school cultural enrichment programs in public schools, while the Nigerian Youth Organization and the Ghanaian Volta Ensemble Dancers meet in family homes to teach dances and cook- ing to build relationships among children and adults. Obvious in all these efforts is that Africans are striving to provide their younger generation with cultural roots that will hold them firmly, help them grow, and give them a sense of identity, which many believe has helped them cope with the difficult transition to life in America.
Africans believe in strong family and cultural ties. This
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belief provides the hope and the expectation of returning home. If and when they do return, they want their children or foreign spouse to be able to fit into their extended families. Hence, they have the desire to teach them about their culture, especially those aspects that have to do with the etiquette of respect for elders, eating in public, greetings, and dress. Dr. Akinyele of the Isokan Yoruba organization explains, “We believe that by teaching our children our culture we will one day go back to our fatherland triumphantly.” With this kind of goal in mind, many culture schools are challenged to present language in an experiential context — to teach language and culture for use rather than as an academic study.
In language and culture schools, a community’s adults brainstorm about which curriculum works and which does not; they strive to recruit teachers and students and find other participants — not always an easy task. One might assume most African children are in culture schools. On the contrary, for many African parents, such a concept is new, and commitment to such schools is not a priority;
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
African Immigrant Folklife
many think they can teach their own children better at home. But many are waking up to the reality that kids learn American TV culture fast when parents are away at work and kids are home alone. The economics of survival prevents many parents from passing on any significant amount of culture. Hence, the future of language schools looks promising.
Some proprietors of language schools have an ultimate goal of providing a cultural immersion program during summer vacations, in which American-born children would go to their home country in Africa to gain authentic experience as they interact daily with custodians of their culture.
The success of many existing cultural schools cannot be measured yet, because they are still very young. Many of them have “teething” problems, with finances sometimes insufficient to hire qualified and interested teachers for the children. However, some experience success, even if not by standard measures. Camp-Africa reports that positive, significant, and lasting marks have been left with many of the children who have passed through the camp. Parents and children interviewed reported that children feel good about themselves and about their African heritage, while many still sing the traditional songs they learned in camp. The future of language and culture schools looks bright in the light of the present situation of the African immigrant community in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
Remi Aluko is a mother of five, educator, writer, and one
of the community scholars of the African Immigrant Folk- life Project. She founded Camp-Africa, an educational summer program which exposes young people to the tra- ditions and history of her Nigerian homeland and other African countries and communities.
Diana Sherblom is an educator trained in anthropology who has interned with the African Immigrant Folklife Project since last year. She interviewed the directors of several language and culture schools for this article.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
relationships Glectings hevonte even more finertartl in African ea sane who maintain traditions of greeting among themselves and pass them on to their American- born children, not only to create the social ties that bind them but also to remind them of the many social customs of home.
Here is a short list of greetings. Join the tradition and use them to say hello to participants in the African Immigrant Program!
Arabic - Ahlan wa sahlan — Hello. Amharic - Enkwandehna metah chu — Hello and welcome. Oromo - Ashamaa — Hello. Susu - /mama— Hi. T'na moufe — How are you?
Yoruba - Ekaro— Good morning. Fkasan — Good day. Fkalé — Good evening. Wolof - Nan‘gu deff — How are you? Mangui fi rekk — | am fine. Diola - Kasumai— How are you?
Did anything bad stay with Kasumi kepp — (response). you overnight? — (a morning Mandinka - Hera bay — Do you greeting). have peace? Akan - Ete sen — How is it? Hera dorong — Fye —Fine. Peace only.
Somali - /ska waran — Hello. Nabad — (response). Zulu - San bonani — Hello.
Luo - Oimore — Hello. Sesotho - Dumela — Hello (and response
to hello). Swahili - Hujambo — Uphela joang — Hello (to one person). How are you? Sijambo — (response).
Hamjambo — Hello (to more than one person). Habari — What's the news?
Ijo - To baroa — Hello. Nda‘ni la‘oku — How are you? Igbo - Daa lu or nde wo — Hello. Ke du — How is it?
Makele Faber is a second-generation Guinean American. She worked at the Center for Folklife Programs & Cultural Studies as an intern for seven months last year on the Working at the Smithsonian program and is currently conducting field research on area African immigrant students for this year’s African Immigrant Program. She works full time in the political depart- ment of NARAL (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League).
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African Immigrant Folklife
African Immigrant Music & Dance in Washington, D.C.
From a Research Report by Kofi Kissi Dompere & Cece Modupé Fadope
s African people
have migrated to
different parts of the world including the United States, their artistic expres- sion of their values and beliefs has helped them to survive. Recent immigrant Africans in the Washington, D.C., area contribute labor
and skills to the regional economy and enliven the local cultural environment through their art, clothing, adorn- ment, and food. It is their music and dance, however, that have most strikingly transformed the cultural terrain. The
IM PAN-AFRICAN
MUSIC OF
(above) The increasing appreciation of African polyrhythms has created a demand for live music. During any spring-summer season, the sounds of Majek Fashek, Soukous Stars, Aster Aweke, and Lucky Dube can be heard at concert halls and music festivals throughout the city. In addition to the African musicians who visit annually from Africa and Europe, a number of local groups have sprung up. Itadi Bonney and the Bakula Band play African highlife and soukous music. The recordings of Mr. Bonney, an exile from Togo, include Mayi Africa and |*Man, both produced in Washington.
Photo courtesy Itadi Bonney Productions
48
broad range and the wide variety of contexts of African music and dance styles to be found in and around the city reflect the cultural diversity of its African-born residents. African immigrant music in metropolitan Washington includes sacred music such as Coptic liturgical music in Ethiopian churches, Muslim devotional chanting in Sene- galese Sufi gatherings, Nigerian and Ghanaian gospel music based on popular highlife rhythms, and ceremonial music like praise songs and epic poetry. Popular dance music such as Zairian soukous, Cameroonian makossa, shaabi from Egypt and Morocco, and Nigerian highlife are also part of the area’s musical soundscape. Musicians perform live at local community events, at restaurants, in homes, and in places of worship. Music circulates via
(left) Large music stores carry African music of internationally known popular artists like Fela Kuti, Miriam Makeba, and Salif Keita. But new specialty retailers such as Simba International Records are making a wider range of African music, artists, and videos available to area residents. Photo by Harold Dorwin
(left) Much of the production of African music in the area has been the effort of enterprising individuals. Ibrahim Change Bah and his African Music Gallery Productions, for example, have not only provided a retail outlet for music but also produced Syran Mbenza on the CD Bana, the Soukous Stars in Soukous Attack, Thierry Mantuka and Gerry Dialungana in Classic 0.K. Jazz, and Tabu Ley Rochereau in Baby Pancake-Aba. Eddie Asante’s labors produced Timeless Highlife by C.K. Mann and Nkai by Pat Thomas of Ghana. Lately, System 77 of Yaw Acheampong Sekyere has been reproducing and marketing Ghanaian highlife music. In this photograph, Ibrahim spins discs on his weekly radio program on WDCU. Photo by Harold Dorwin
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
African Immigrant Folklife
audiotape and videotape cassettes, CD, community radio, Ethiopian immigrants in Washington, D.C., and performed
and cable television programs. Events like independence as part of the musical repertoire of Nigerian, Gambian, and day dances bring together people who have come to the Ghanaian musicians. The messages of African music have United States from the same country of origin. In the found many an ear in metropolitan Washington. The Washington area, immigrant Africans celebrate themselves _ photographs and descriptions that follow illustrate some of by coming together and sharing traditions within a new the varied contexts of African music in the area. community. They create ethnic music and dance troupes to educate their children and others unfamiliar with their Cece Modupé Fadopé is a Nigerian-born journalist and cultural heritage. host of the radio program “African Perspectives” on Tastes in music and knowledge of dance can be markers = WPFW. In addition to his role as the originator and host that define boundaries between community insiders and of WPFW’s “African Rhythms and Extensions,” Kofi Kissi outsiders. They can also bridge communities. Jamaican Dompere, who is of Ghanaian origin, teaches economics reggae music, for example, in which Ethiopia is a central at Howard University. The essay by Ann Olumba on com- symbol of African world heritage, is embraced by young munity radio profiles these authors at greater length.
(above) Somali oud musician Hasan Gure plays for friends at an informal gathering in Falls Church, Virginia. They sing songs from their childhood in Somalia, songs composed during their struggles for independence, songs of praise and advice to their sons and daughters, and songs of their experiences in exile. Photo by Harold Dorwin
(above) Young members of an Ethiopian Christian congregation play the kebero, a traditional drum, and sing during a service celebrating the new year. Photo by Harold Dorwin
(right) Ethnic and regional community organizations like the Volta Club organize traditional Ewe music and dance groups to create an atmosphere of family from which members derive support, assistance, and cultural fulfillment in time of need, sorrow, or joy (see Joan Frosch-Schroder 1991). Photo by Ebo Ansah
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE 49
African Immigrant Folklife
Nile Ethiopian Ensemble: Profile of an African Immigrant Music & Dance Group
Betty J. Belanus, from research by Tesfaye Lemma & Dagnachew Abebe
ore than 40,000 Washington-area residents M claim the Ethiopian region as their birthplace.
They are members of several culturally, religiously, linguistically, and ethnically diverse communities. The largest is Amharic, but the area also includes Tigrean, Oromo, Eritrean, and Gurage. Tesfaye Lemma, a longtime advisor and community scholar of the African Immigrant Folklife Project, is the founder of the Center for Ethiopian Arts and Culture and of the Nile Ethiopian Ensemble. The center, like many other African immigrant organizations, promotes traditional culture for the benefit of their youth and the understanding of the general American community. And, like many African immigrant music and dance groups, the ensemble presents traditions from many peoples — in
Suggested Reading
Barlow, Sean, and Eyre Banning. 1995. Afropop: An Illustrated Guide to Contemporary African Music. Edison, New Jersey: Chartwell Books.
Broughton, Simon, Mark Ellingham, David Muddyman, and Richard Trillo, eds. 1994.The Rough Guide to World Music. London: Rough Guides.
Frosch-Schroder, Joan. 1991. Things of Significance Do Not Vanish: Dance and the Transmission of Culture in the Ghanaian Community. UCLA
Journal of Dance Ethnology 15: 54-67.
Lemma, Tesfaye. 1991. Ethiopian Musical Instruments. Washington, D.C.:
published by the author.
_,ed. Newsletter of the Center for Ethiopian Arts and Culture.
P.0. Box 73236, Washington, DC 20056-0236.
Donned in traditional clothing and carrying traditional instruments, the Nile Ethiopian Ensemble poses for a photo. Photo courtesy Nile Ethiopian Ensemble
this case, those from the Horn of Africa — in their performances.
The ensemble often performs with Seleshe Damessae, a master of the kerar (six-stringed lyre), who learned to play from his father. Damessae spent four years studying the traditions of the Azmaris, itinerant performers in northern Ethiopia, from whom he is descended. He now teaches young apprentices to make and play their own kerars here in Washington, D.C.
Most members of the ensemble started performing as youngsters in Ethiopia. “| enjoyed dancing with my
friends during holidays like Easter, New Year, Christmas, and also weddings. Many people from the neighborhood admired my talent, and | continued my singing and dancing career in school,” said dancer Abebe Belew, who was born in Gondar Province.
Like singer Selamawit Nega, most future members of the ensemble in the late 1970s were recruited or forced to join music and dance groups sponsored by the former Ethiopian government “to educate for propaganda purposes.” Dancer Almaze Getahun recalls that when his family objected to this, “My father was labeled a revolutionary, and they sent him to jail.” During this time, members of the ensemble learned songs and dances from many Ethiopian ethnic groups.
Most of the ensemble members eventually moved to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and joined musical groups that toured the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Tesfaye Lemma defected to the United States while on a tour in 1987. As musicians and dancers arrived in the Washington area, Lemma formed the ensemble. And, in accordance with the Amharic proverb, “Kes be kes inkulal be igru yehedal" (Slowly, slowly, even an egg will walk), the group has developed a loyal audience for their performances in the Washington, D.C, area and beyond.
On the weekends, musicians from neighboring regions of Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, and Algeria sometimes stay late at local North African restaurants like Casablanca performing music together in informal sessions attended by family and friends from home. New groups form from such
gatherings. The Kasbah Band, musicians of Moroccan origin, perform both Moroccan shaabi and
Algerian rai popular music at a holiday banquet of the Algerian-American Association of Greater
Washington, D.C. Photo by Harold Dorwin
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
African Immigrant Folklife
n almost all African cultures food is a traditional art. Simple or elaborate, frugal or opulent, food plays a vital role in affirming individual ethnic identities and in modeling cultural diversity. Recent African immigrants to the Washington metropolitan area come from different regions of the continent. And, as they create a taste of home through their food- ways, they discover the similarities and differences in their fellow immigrants’ foods. They also come to know the common problems they share cooking “authentic” dishes and recreating the con- texts of serving them. Immigrant groups sustain continuity by cooking everyday meals similar to those that nourish families in Africa, by using food in the context of tradi- tional celebrations, and by establishing African restaurants.
Mealtimes in Africa bring families together: the gener- ation gap between young and old can be bridged; in con- versations, children may learn proverbs, their meanings, and other wisdom from their elders. Here in the United States, however, African immigrant families are often too busy to sit down to a traditional-style meal every day of the week, or sometimes even once a week. But great effort is made to introduce to children traditional foods and the etiquette of eating.
While most ingredients needed for traditional foods are now available in the Washington, D.C., area at specialized grocery stores serving African, Caribbean, Latin Amer- ican, and Asian cooks, this was not always the case for earlier immigrants. Olaniyi Areke, a film maker originally from Nigeria, recalls trying to find something in an Amer- ican grocery store resembling the staple fufu, made in West Africa from cassava flour. The closest thing he could find was Bisquick!
Some African immigrants with enough yard space and access to seeds from home grow their own vegetables and herbs. Different varieties of greens, many of them not to be found even in specialty stores, are popular garden items. Sally Tsuma, originally from the Kalenjian region of Kenya, grows five types of greens around her home near Catholic University. Sally cooks a large batch of
A Taste of | Home: African Immigrant Foodways
Nomvula Mashoai Cook & Betty J. Belanus
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
greens on the weekend and serves them throughout the week, heating them in the micro- wave. The correct com- bination of greens is the secret to the taste, as Sally says, “When you cook [the greens] alone, it tastes like something’s missing.” Comfort foods for African immigrants are staples like
fufu, or the Southern African
papa (made from corn flour), roughly equivalent to American mashed potatoes. Typical dishes accompanying the staples — depending on the region of Africa you hail from — are stews and soups made with palm oil, puréed peanuts, dried or fresh fish, okra, tomatoes, onions, hot pep- pers, black-eyed peas,
Members of the Saint Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in Fairfax, Virginia, celebrate Christmas with a variety of traditional foods. Photo © Roland Freeman
Veronica Abu, originally from Ghana, puts the finishing touches on a dish of gari foto, a stew made with roasted cassava powder and black-eyed peas. Photo by Ena Fox
lentils, many different kinds of meat, and an array of spices. But there are many foods considered more exotic by most Americans that also count among the comfort foods of some Africans: goat’s head, for instance, or lamb’s intestines. Foods served often reflect a combination of cultures, as Dorothy Osei-Kuffuor, originally from Ghana, says: “The main dishes in my house are African, though the children enjoy some American dishes, too.” Living in America, some African immigrant women break traditional food taboos. Nsedu Onyile wrote in a
Washington Post article:
Let me tell you about the goat head. Where I come from, the women fix and serve it in a big platter but only the men are entitled to eat it. As a child, I fantasized about the taste of the goat head and could not wait for an opportunity to eat one.
51
African Immigrant Folklife
ee
Wee eee
Now in a total declaration of independence, I buy a goat from the slaughterhouse, fix the head first, and sit down to catch up on missed years. I eat every bit of this delicacy, appreciating what those men enjoyed during their roundtable goat con- ferences in our sunny yard back in Nigeria.
In the Washington, D.C., area, such splendid African foods are more often served at family or community celebrations. Every major rite of passage — birth, coming- of-age, marriage, and death — is celebrated with specific foods. At a traditional naming ceremony in the Yoruba community, for instance, a tray of symbolic ritual foods is prepared that includes salt (for joy and happiness), palm oil, cola nut, bitter cola and alligator pepper (for medicinal purposes), and honey (for sweetness). After the ceremony, a meal including fried plantains, two rice dishes, goat stew with fufu, boiled yam, and chicken is served to all the guests.
Other types of celebrations bring communities together seasonally. One example is the braai, a South African cookout celebrated in the summer. Typically, the women congregate in the kitchen, cooking and singing. The men bond with each other and with their sons while preparing imbuzi ne mvu (goat and lamb) for the barbecue grill with such savory condiments as South African curry or cumin. The braai usually starts at noon and may last until mid- night. Besides eating and reconnecting with old friends, people might listen to South African township music. Conversation might center around political, economic, or social issues and their effect on people back home.
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(above) Sally Tsuma uses every available section of the front yard of her home near Catholic University in Washington, D.C, to grow greens like those she enjoyed in Kenya. Photo by Harold Dorwin
(left) Hermela Kebede prepares a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony for friends at her home in Silver Spring. Photo by Harold Dorwin
Children are encouraged to play games such as lebekere (hide-and-seek).
Community-bridging celebrations that are hybrids of American and African traditions also involve food. At the Cook household in % suburban Maryland, this year’s Kwanzaa celebration (an African-American holiday) brought together African immigrants from all parts of the continent, African Americans, and White Americans. The food was potluck and included roast turkey, Christmas cookies, Swedish-style meatballs, and a rice dish from an Egyptian guest. The centerpiece dishes, however, were cooked with great loving care (and no visible recipes) by Mimi Green, originally from Niger in West Africa. They included yassa chicken (a Senegalese dish), egusi spinach (spinach with ground melon seeds), and mafi (meatballs in a peanut butter sauce), all served with mounds of perfect white rice. As is the custom in many African cultures, a libation offering of drink for the ancestors was poured on the ground before the meal was eaten.
Other occasions bring generations together and reinforce language and customs. Amharic women in the Washing- ton, D.C., area meet at one another’s homes for a coffee ceremony. The coffee is roasted and prepared in a special pot and served with crunchy grain snacks. Kenyan women in the area try to meet once a month for chai (tea) and mandazi (doughnuts).
Restaurants offering many African cuisines have mushroomed around the metropolitan Washington area in the past ten years. Many find their homes in the ethnically diverse Adams Morgan area of the city including well- established Ethiopian restaurants like Meskerem, Addis Ababa, and The Red Sea, as well as newer ventures such as the Casa Africana, which serves West African food, and the South African Cafe. Cecelia Vilakazi, owner/prop- rietor of the South African Cafe, whose parents emigrated from South Africa to the United States when she was a teenager, explains her motivation to start her restaurant in 1995: “I looked and I saw Ethiopians have restaurants,
7 me 4 P . 2 y <a EL a4
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
African Immigrant Folklife
people from Ghana, Nigeria, and Brazil, but no South Africa. So the timing was right to introduce the rich culinary spread that’s there in South Africa. I saw an opportunity and said this was something I’ve always wanted to do.”
These restaurants, of course, cater not only to African immigrant clients but also to culinarily adventurous Americans. Some attempt, therefore, is made to serve foods that appeal to a wide spectrum of people. Cecelia admits it takes some education for those unfamiliar with some of the dishes served at the South African Cafe, such as bobotie, a meat loaf with curry spices and raisins. “It’s tasty, but you have to grow up eating it. When people do try it, we show them how to eat it, and they like it.” She has toned down the heavily meat-oriented South African diet to accommodate American tastes.
There are also foods prepared exclusively for a busy African immigrant clientele. At lunchtime, taxicabs line the front of the Akosombo restaurant near Chinatown, where the African-born drivers can get cafeteria-style service like that in the restaurants back in Ghana. African immigrant caterers, some working out of their home kitchens, deliver traditional foods to wedding receptions, naming ceremonies, and birthday or graduation parties. Whether cooked as a simple dish at home, for an elaborate celebration, or for sale to the public, African immigrant foods embody cultural connections. They create a con- tinuity with custom back home, and they reflect the cir- cumstances of living in a new place. Like other aspects of
African immigrant folklife in the Washing- ton, D.C., area, foodways are continually recreated and offer a glimpse of a com- munity in the process of defining itself.
Nomvula Mashoai Cook was born in South Africa and raised in Lesotho. She is a recent graduate of Strayer College with a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration and will be continuing her studies at Howard University in African studies this fall. She has been a member of the African Immigrant Folklife Study group since 1994.
Betty J. Belanus is a complete novice at African cooking but has enjoyed eating her way through the research for this article. She is an Education Specialist at the Center for Folklife Programs & Cultural Studies and the Co-Curator of the African Immigrant Program.
2d ¥ oye ee
84. Eth Regional a
Foodways in the United States. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Hafner, Dorinda. 1993. Taste of Africa. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.
Grant, Rosamund. 1995. Taste of Africa. New York: Smithmark Publishers.
Kirlin, Katherine, and Thomas Kirlin. 1991. Smithsonian Folklife Cookbook. Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Onyile, Nsedu. 1995. I'll Have the
Goat's Head, Please.
Washington Post. 5 March.
2-3 well-ripened yellow plantains 4-5 cups of oil for deep frying 1 level tsp. ground hot, red pepper 1 medium onion, chopped 1 garlic clove, chopped thumb-size piece of fresh ginger, chopped; or 1 level tsp. ground ginger (ground ginger does not give the dish as full a taste) salt to taste Increase ingredients by 1/4 when adding more plantains to the recipe.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
Peel plantains, cut into one-inch pieces, wash, and place in a bowl. Blend pepper, chopped ginger, chopped onion, and chopped garlic. Add blended spices to the bowl with the cut plantains. Coat
Serve Kele Wele after the main course as a dessert. Servings: 4
plantains well with the mixed spices. Deep-fry pieces of spicy plaintain in hot oil until golden brown.
—Recipe by Veronica Abu, a community scholar and
cultural activist, who enjoys sharing traditions and
culture from her homeland, Ghana.
53
African Immigrant
Broadcast Media
African Immigrant Folklife
The following article has been compiled from edited excerpts ’ Co mM mM U n | ly community scholar Ann Olumba on African media hosts in the Washington, D.C., area as part of the African Immigrant Folklife Study. Other excerpts have been
Ann Nosiri Olumba
published in an article in the Journal Cultural Survival.
Ithough nationally syndicated programs such as
National Public Radio’s “Afro-Pop” are well
known across the country, Washington, D.C., radio stations often feature local shows that blend traditional and popular African music, showcase local African music groups, and inform about Africa-related activities around town. These programs play an important role in building community consciousness, introducing African music to Americans, and keeping music traditions vital for immigrants.
Many African immigrants hold to aspects of their cultures tenaciously and hold them in esteem, regardless of the many difficulties they face in doing so. To many of them, culture is central, something to be practiced and maintained. Undermining immigrants’ self-esteem and reverence for their traditions are the widely held, ignorant, negative stereotypes of Africans and their cultures. African traditional customs have been destroyed in many ways, but none has had more far-reaching impact than mass communication: television, film, radio, newspapers, and periodicals have all been used to denigrate Africans and their traditions.
But although the mass media can have a negative effect on an immigrant group’s traditional culture, they can also be a means through which cultural traditions are cele- brated and a larger public’s respect for them increased. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the import- ance of mass media as an instrument of social and cultural uplift, so that such media can be further mobilized to propagate African traditions and cultures in the United States. Although African radio programs in the Washing- ton, D.C., area are plagued by lack of funds, limited trans- mitting power, and often short duration (ranging in length from thirty minutes to three hours per week), African im- migrants in the media use their resources in the struggle to
54
of a research report written by
change negative assumptions about Africans and their traditions.
“The African Connection” on WDCU-FM and “African Perspectives” and “African Rhythms and Extensions” on WPFW-FM operate in the greater Washington metro- politan area. These weekly programs share common goals: to project and promote African cultural traditions in a positive way, to help maintain and strengthen links be- tween African immigrants and their homelands, and to provide a forum where African immigrants can express themselves and discuss issues concerning Africa.
“THE AFRICAN CONNECTION”
Mr. Ibrahim Kanja Bah is the host of “The African Con- nection” — broadcast on WDCU, 90.1 FM Saturday after- noon from 12 noon to 3 p.m. — a music program and call- in show that features music from Africa and the Carib- bean. The program’s goal is to educate the American public about African and Caribbean culture and at the same time to entertain them. As education, the program projects African culture in a more positive way than the negative assumptions and conclusions about Africans and their cultures so widespread in the media. The program concentrates mainly on up-to-date music — both modern and traditional in style — from different countries of Africa. Some of the kinds of African music played on this program are: kora music, juju, fuji, highlife, and soukous. In addition, the program plays Caribbean music such as calypso, reggae, and zouk. African immigrants have bene- fited from this program. Some who had little or no idea about the many different varieties of African music have come to understand more about its diversity in the African world.
Mr. Ibrahim Kanja Bah, who was born in Sierra Leone, has been hosting “The African Connection” for several years. He had no background in radio broadcasting when he started hosting the program. ““The African Connec- tion’ provides a way for people to begin to understand that Africa is dynamic, alive, and well,” he said, “aside from the Africa that they hear about in the news.”
“AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES”
“African Perspectives,” a public affairs program focusing on Africa, is produced and hosted by Ms. Cece Modupé Fadopé. The program’s goal is to shift public focus from existing negative stereotypes and assumptions about Africa to how ordinary people meet the challenges of
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
African Immigrant Folklife
accomplishing social and economic development on the continent. The listening audience is a cross-spectrum of Africans, African Americans, African Caribbeans, Afri- cans from South America, and others interested in African issues.
Through “African Perspectives,” African immigrants convey who they are in their own voices. Concerned with the immigrants’ welfare, the program has on many occa- sions invited experts to give suggestions and valuable advice on problem areas facing their communities. Immigration and naturalization law, for example, is one area the program has focused on; the position of women in the community is another. “African Perspectives” also focuses on cultural contributions made by African immigrants to American social life. Musical artists and sculptors from Sudan have come and shared their talents and experiences with listeners.
The program also serves as a link between African immigrants and their homelands, disseminating infor- mation of events as they happen in Africa, reported by Africans and with African perspectives. It receives very favorable reactions from its listeners and facilitates their opportunity for participation. It provides one way for African immigrants to share their political views and serves as a medium through which community events can be brought to their attention. “African Perspectives” re- ceives appreciation from African immigrant communities, but its development process needs more grassroots finan- cial support. The program has been on the air weekly for four years, on Fridays from 11:30 a.m. to midday.
Ms. Fadopé is a journalist and activist, born in Nigeria. She has hosted “African Perspectives” for three years. A graduate of the University of Maryland, she has taken numerous courses in communication over the years. She is very interested in using communication strategies to build and empower grassroots organizations. The idea for “Afri- can Perspectives,” she said, “just came naturally to me. It is something useful that I want to do, and I have put a lot of time and energy in cultivating the skills that are needed.... I would like to make “African Perspectives’ part of a larger media communication strategy to build the image of Africa as it [really] is. Not have the major attention be on what the military governments do. Africa is its people. It’s more than the government, it’s more than the heads of states, and it’s more than the crises that happen.”
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
“AFRICAN RHYTHMS AND EXTENSIONS” “African Rhythms and Extensions” is hosted by Dr. Kofi Kissi Dompere and is broadcast on WPFW, 89.3 FM Sundays from 10 p.m. to 12 midnight. The program started more than ten years ago as African Roots.” The agenda of “African Rhythms and Extensions” is to promote African music in the United States and to share the African creative essence in rhythms; to promote awareness by African immigrant and non-African communities of the relationship between Black musical forms and of their roots in African musical forms; and to use music to bring people together in peace and understanding. The program is structured under three rubrics. “Meta Polyrhythms” pre- sents different traditional musical forms. A news section brings communities into contact with what is happening in the continent of Africa. And the “African Megamix in Polyrhythms” presents modern African musical forms and their relationships to other Black musical forms. The ob- jectives of “African Rhythms and Extensions” are to sell African music and to present African culture in its finest form. Musical performances are selected to show relation- ships and continuities among African musical forms and to demonstrate that on one level the musical languages are the same. Like “The African Connection,” this program also projects an idea of African unity by educating Afri- cans to other African musical styles they have never heard.
Dr. Kofi Kissi Dompere is a professor in the Depart- ment of Economics at Howard University. His country of
Cece Modupé Fadopé interviews
a human rights attorney on her weekly radio program, “African Perspectives," heard on WPFW-FM in Washington, D.C.
Photo by Harold Dorwin
55
African Immigrant Folklife
origin is Ghana. He previously hosted a program called “World Rhythms” for four years, although he had no for- mal training in radio broadcasting. He acquired his know- ledge about African musical forms and their cultural im- plications through reading. He has hosted the program for more than ten years, financing it himself and hosting it without pay. Dr. Dompere remarked, “I hope that people will understand through the ‘African Rhythms and Exten- sions’ program that Africa has a lot to offer in terms of civilization, and it would be useful to pay a little good attention. I hope that ‘African Rhythms’ would become not only an instrument of enjoyment but also an instru- ment of instruction.”
While all of the radio hosts interviewed use different approaches, all are working toward a common goal, which is promoting and positively projecting African traditions and cultures. There is a real need for the establishment of an African radio station that would be under the manage- ment and directorship of African immigrants. Such a station would empower the African immigrants, giving them the freedom to select and present more cultural programs which address their needs and interests. In ad- dition, they would be able to schedule and allocate enough time for each program, including cultural programs for young people and seniors. With their own radio stations under community management, the African immigrants would have the opportunity to express themselves more and share their feelings and opinions with regard to their cultures and traditions.
Ann Nosiri Olumba is a community scholar and research
consultant who has studied the role of the media in her native Nigeria as well as in metropolitan Washington, D.C., where she currently resides.
56
aa Saturday, 3 - 3:30 p.m.
WPFW, 89.3 FM Sunday, 10 p.m. - midnight Dr. Kofi Kissi Dompere, host Senegambia Program
WUST, 1120 AM
“2000 Black” Saturday, 3:30 - 4 p.m.
WPFW, 89.3 FM
Monday, midnight - 3 a.m. “Netsanet”
Bafoo, host WUST, 1120 AM Sunday, 1-2 p.m.
“Konbitlakey”
WPFW, 89.3 FM “Evening Exchange”
WHMM-TV, Channel 32 Thursday, 1-2 p.m. Kojo Nnamdi, host
Saturday, 10 p.m. - midnight Yvesdayiti, host
“Kend Ethiopia” WUST, 1120 AM Sunday, 3 - 5 p.m.
“Africa Plus” Check local cable listings.
“African Perspectives” WPFW, 89.3 FM
Friday, 11:30 a.m. - noon Cece Madupé Fadopé, hostess
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
African Immigrant Folklife
African Immigrant Enterprise in Metropolitan Washington, D.C.:
A Photo Essay
Kinuthia Macharia
tarting a new business requires innovation,
risk taking, hard work, and a lot of discipline.
For African immigrants, who have settled in the Washington, D.C. area at least 7,000 miles from home, even more is involved. African immigrants must learn American business practices, laws, and success strategies. Many rely on traditional skills, such as hair braiding, tailoring or dressmaking, and cooking as a basis for their businesses. At the same time, they rely on traditional social networks within their immigrant communities — friendship, kinship, and people from the same region or ethnic group back home — to help them succeed.
Some businesses cater mainly to fellow immi- grants looking for services and goods available in Africa, such as the specialty groceries found at the Oyingbo International Store in Hyattsville, Mary-
land. Others serve as a gathering place for the pan- African community, like the Soukous Club and Serengeti Club on Georgia Avenue in Washington, D.C. Still others find their main clientele to be African Americans in search of their roots: for instance, stores specializing in African clothing, music, and crafts.
These photographs suggest the range of businesses established by African immigrants in the greater metropolitan area of Washington, D.C.
Dr. Kinuthia Macharia, originally from Kenya, is a
professor in the Sociology Department at The American University. He previously taught at Harvard University. His research interests include culture and entrepreneurship in East Africa and African immigrants in the United States.
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Light, Ivan. 1984. Immigrant and Ethnic Enterprise in North America. Ethnic and Racial Studies 7: 195-216.
Macharia, Kinuthia. 1997. “The African Entrepreneur in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area: Tradition in the Service of Entrepreneurship.” Research report for the African Immigrant Folklife Study Project.
Obeng International Grocery in Hyattsville, Maryland, is one of several African immigrant-owned grocery stores in the Washington, D.C, area. In addition to fresh produce such as yams, cassava, cola nuts, special kinds of peppers and fresh herbs, and packaged spices and condiments imported from Africa, such stores often carry newspapers, magazines, videos and recordings, and other products from home. They are also outlets for African immigrant-produced items such as baked goods from the West African Bakery in Woodbridge, Virginia. Photo by Harold Dorwin
57
African Immigrant Folklife
(right) Following centuries-old traditions of long-distance trade throughout Africa, itinerant vendors of African decorative arts and jewelry have initiated businesses at many local street festivals in the District of Columbia’s Malcolm X Park, in Alexandria, Virginia, and in Silver Spring, Maryland. A vendor, originally from Mali, displays his wares at Freedom Plaza in a manner learned from observing and imitating similar displays in West African tourist markets and Furopean cities.
Photo by Nomvula Cook
(right) Thony Anyiam at his shop in the International Mall, Langley Park, Maryland. Thony Anyiam learned his
tailoring skills from family members in his native Ivory Coast. His shop joins anumber of other African immigrant-owned shops in the International Mall in Langley Park including Lagos Fabrics. In the traditional African manner, clients pick their fabrics and come to Thony
Anyiam for a consultation on styles.
Videotapes as well as style books help clients decide on their garments, which will be worn for special occasions such as naming ceremonies, dances, and weddings. Photo by Harold Dorwin
58
(above) Individual craftspeople such as Mamo Tessema, who creates fine ceramics and enameled jewelry, use traditional skills in new ways here in the Washington, D.C, area. For instance, Mr. Tessema produces pots and cups used for traditional coffee ceremonies; they otherwise would have to be imported from Ethiopia at great cost and risk of damage because of their fragility. His coffee services, however, reflect Western ceramic techniques instead of the traditional unglazed pottery of Ethiopia. Another craftsperson in the area, Namori Keita, uses his skill in woodcarving to create architectural artistry which he learned in Senegal and Mali. Photo by Harold Dorwin
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
African Immigrant Folklife
(below) Catering is done from restaurants, commercial kitchens, or homes in Washington, D.C, area African immigrant communities. Occasions catered include weddings, naming ceremonies, graduations, and cultural events such as Independence Day celebrations. Some caterers advertise their services in newsletters and other community publications, but many are known only by word of mouth. Photo by Harold Dorwin
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
(left) Over a dozen Ethiopian restaurants are located on and around 18th Street and Columbia Road in the Adams Morgan area of Washington, D.C, serving aromatic stews served over flat injera bread and strong coffees. While” these restaurants offer a gathering place for the large Ethiopian community in the area, they also delight Washington diners and tourists from all over the world. A few West African restaurants and one representing South Africa have also sprung up in the area. In addition, African immigrant-owned grocery stores, record shops, and arts and crafts stores line 18th Street. Restaurant owner Cecelia Vilakazi likes to think of this blend of African businesses in Adams Morgan as the beginning of an “African renaissance” in Washington, D.C.
Photo by Harold Dorwin
(left) The hair-braiding industry in the United States has been stimulated by the presence of highly skilled entrepreneurial African women. This salon in the Mt. Pleasant area is one of many African immigrant-owned braiding salons in Washington, D.C.
Photo by Diana Baird N'Diaye
59
Sacred Sounds
Sacred
Sounds: ‘Belief & Society
James Early
Throughout world history sacred sounds have served as a medium for human cultures to raise queries, advance beliefs, give praise, and inspire others to Join in explor- ation of the mysteries of earthly existence and the greater
universe.
eflecting the widespread and growing public
awareness of and interest in religious beliefs and spirit- ual meaning in everyday life, the 1997 Festival of American Folklife program Sacred Sounds: Belief & Society features a variety of religious and spiritual tradi- tions. Through performan- ces and discussions with Festival visitors, Festival participants from Old Regular Baptist communi- ties in Kentucky, hip hop Christian worshipers from The Bronx, New York, African-American gospel choirs and quartets, representatives of South African indigenous-Christ- ian blends of worship and popular music, and prac- titioners of Islamic and Judaic traditions in Jeru- salem, among other religious and cultural communities, will share their perspectives and feelings about the intrinsic nature of their sacred cultures and the musical extensions of their faiths into the secular world. Throughout world history sacred sounds have served as a medium for human cultures to raise queries, advance beliefs, give praise, and inspire others to join in exploration of the mysteries of earthly existence and the greater universe. These sacred sound traditions encompass a broad range of
60
expressive forms: melodic and repetitive vocalizations called chants; sharp, passionate, emotion-filled hums, groans, shouts; percussive, rhythmic hand claps and foot stomps; and extended song, sermon, and instrumental arrangements. Instrumental music, sung prayers, and mystical chants have been used to communicate with the divine, to unite religious communities, and to express moral, political, social, and economic aspirations. Sacred sounds in many traditions are the central means for invocation of the spirits. The utterance of particular sounds is thought by many cultures to form a connection to all the elements of the universe. In some belief systems music and sound vibrations are pathways for healing body, mind, and spirit. Among the wide range of human expressive behavior, the capacity to infuse the joys, sor- rows, and humility that characterize religious and spiritual beliefs into oral poetry, chants, songs, and instrumental music is certainly one of the most powerful and inspirational ways all peoples and cultures acknowledge the spirit of the Supreme in their lives.
Although secular and sacred are terms used to disting- uish worldly and temporal concerns from the realm of the universal and the eternal, sacred sounds are not necessarily restricted to formal settings in which religious rituals are performed for followers. Civil rights struggles, national democratic liberation movements, and union picket lines are a few of the non-sacred spaces where religious music has been consistently and meaningfully incorporated into worldly affairs.
In the United States the predominance of Christianity and its related sacred text may readily bring to mind familiar references to sacred sounds: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.... Come before his presence with singing” (Psalm 100: 1-2); “My Lord, He calls me by the thunder... the trumpets sound within my soul...” (from “Steal Away” [African-American spiritual]). Inside and outside of the United States many other religious and spiritual traditions in diverse cultural communities also express profound beliefs through sacred sounds. For example, the Upanishads — Vedic sacred treatises of ancient India — teach that “the essence of sacred knowledge is word and sound, and the essence of word and sound 1s [the hummed syllable] OM.” Although the languages of many religious texts and
Support for this program comes from The Recording Industries Music Performance Trust Funds and the Republic of South Africa Department of Arts, Culture, Science, and Technology.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
Sacred Sounds
spoken rituals may be inaccessible to different cultural communities, sacred sounds are generally well received and understood as a means by which all cultures acknow- ledge higher states of wonder, consciousness, and order that transcend everyday thoughts, actions, and activities and connect one and all to the deeper recesses of the universe. Plato referred to “music as moral law ... the essence of order, [that] leads to all that is good, just and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate, and eternal form.”
Physical migrations and telecommunications bring the world’s religious cultures into new mixed worship spaces: increasingly, different religious services are held in the same place of worship at different times, and diverse religious services and styles of sacred music come into homes via radio and television. New encounters that bring previously isolated community worship traditions face to face sometimes challenge Plato’s “essence of order” and literally jar the religious and spiritual assumptions — and the very ears — of those of us unfamiliar with other sacred traditions and expressive cultural behavior. For example, according to a recent Washington Post report, one of the long-time parishioners of Calvary Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, Virginia, took offense at a “particular African-
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
Hip hop, a contemporary form of oral culture created predominantly by African-American and Puerto Rican youth of the South Bronx, finds expression in the Christian rap ministry of Brothers Inc. 4 Da Lord. Photo © Alex Gomez
style service” in which Ghanaian immigrants in the con- gregation brought forth “offerings with song and swirling dance, accompanied by drums, synthesizer and electric guitar.” On the other hand, the spiritual awareness of one of the church elders was expanded through the observance of a different cultural community’s approach to his faith: “T never felt the spirit so strongly.”
Festival visitors will meet a variety of religious practi- tioners and sacred sound performers whose religious and spiritual doctrines are quite similar in their acknowledge- ment of human existence in a grander scheme of organi- zation created and ruled by a Supreme power(s). They will learn that each group (American Indian, Islamic, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Santerfa, Judaic, Mokhukhu of the Zion Christian Church of South Africa) may exhibit multiple variations on the sacred sounds of the same religious or spiritual doctrine. They will observe that, in communities defined by religious denomination, racial identity, cultural style, age group, and gender, sacred sounds are expressed through a rich variety of artistic forms, with a wide range of emotional intensity, in a broad spectrum of meditative tenors and creative participatory dynamics between per- formers and audiences.
Festival visitors will learn how the lined-out singing of
61
Sacred Sounds
the Old Regular Baptists from the coal-mining country of the southern Appalachian Mountains reflects a multi- cultural history of English/Scots/Irish-based American melodic traditions. They will witness the intensely expressed belief of the Zion Christian Church of South Africa — the largest Christian church on the continent of Africa — and hear how it melds traditional native religious beliefs and the teachings of Christian mission- aries. Through intimate conversations with participants, visitors will learn about Asian Pacific American sacred
Folkways Collection
Black American Religious Music from Southeast Georgia. 19.
Festival of Japanese Music in Hawai'i, Vol. 1. 8885.
Old Believers: Songs of the Nekrasov Cossacks. 40462.
Rhythms of Rapture: Sacred Musics of Haitian Vodou. 40464.
Sacred Rhythms of Cuban Santeria. 40419.
Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions, Volumes 1-4. 40076.
Yoruba Drums from Benin,
West Africa. 40440.
62
traditions, which are increasingly visible, audible, vibrant elements of new and old communities across the United States. Performers of Santeria, a synthesis of West African Yoruba Orisha worship and Catholicism practiced in Cuba, the United States, and areas of South America, will demonstrate and inform visitors how cross- fertilization between culturally different worship traditions can lead to what is generally referred to as syncretism. In the case of Santeria, song, instrumental music (orus), and dance are as central to the basic character of the religious ritual as the spoken word is in other religions.
The narrative stage in the Sacred Sounds program is the setting in which visitors can pursue such questions as how the age-old process of passing different religious traditions and styles from one generation to the next interacts with the ever-changing popular music scene. Young visitors and adults can jointly inquire about hip hop, a highly popular music form among youth around the world that is a creative way for some of today’s youth ministries, such as Brothers Inc. 4 Da Lord, to express their Christian faith — despite the fact that hip hop is roundly criticized for promotion of violence, misogyny, and vulgar language.
There is no substitute for direct experience with the vast array of sacred musical traditions that make up the human family. As sacred belief systems from around the world become more mobile and their musical traditions more evident in our home communities, we are afforded oppor- tunities to visit different worship services and community festivals, make new acquaintances, and learn and appre- ciate first-hand the wondrous worlds of sacred sounds and beliefs. Sacred sound performers from throughout the country and around the world are also well documented and preserved in the archives of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, a veritable museum of the air at the Smith- sonian Center for Folklife Programs & Cultural Studies.
James Early is the Director of Cultural Studies and
Communications at the Center for Folklife Programs & Cultural Studies.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
Sacred Sounds
Faith in Action: Mokhukhu of the Zion Christian Church
Marcus Ramogale & Sello Galane
When they dance Mokhukhu, [they] frequently leap into the air and then come down stamping their feet on the ground with their huge white boots ... In order symbolically to
subjugate evil.
SMITHSONIAN FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLIFE
he Zion Christian Church (ZCC), founded in
1924 by Engenas Lekganyane, is the largest of
the African indigenous churches in South Africa. These churches “combine Christianity with some elements of traditional African belief’ (Joyce 1989:295). Thus they are, in several significant ways, different from the mainstream Christian churches, brought to the south- ern African subcontinent by European missionaries, that adhere to conventional Christian beliefs and practices.
The ZCC belongs to the so-called independent churches of South Africa — described as independent because they are not under “white control” (Lukhaimane 1980:1). The Zionist churches did not break away directly from the mission establishment; their origins lie, instead, in Zion City, Illinois, where John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) founded the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in 1896. The influence of his church spread to South Africa in 1904 when Daniel Bryant baptized several Africans (see Lukhaimane 1980:14).
Independent Ethiopian churches, on the other hand, have their roots in the history of resistance to the imperial system. In the thinking of many White missionaries, the success of Christianization depended on Westernization, and they intertwined religious conversion with the imposi- tion of new cultural norms. This, inevitably, led to the phenomenon of “cultural deprivation” among African converts. As a consequence, in the second half of the 19th century some converts attempted to protect and perpetuate certain aspects of African culture. For example, the rise of “nativistic” sentiment prompted the Reverend Nehemiah Tile to break away from the Methodist Church in 1884. The Ethiopian movement in South Africa is often traced to this event, because thereafter the breakaway church move- ment gained momentum.
The separatist movement was not just a rejection of alien cultural values; it was also aimed at revitalizing the African society which colonial conquest had rendered ineffectual. According to some scholars, the separatist movement can be seen as the struggle of the African to assert his significance as a human being. This significance he knew very well in his home before his culture was dis- rupted by the impact of Western culture. He had had to surrender it in the face of overwhelming and awe-inspiring wonders of the White man. He was then left without pur- pose, and his degeneration as a human being began. The Separatist Churches restore this sense of purpose (Vila- kazi, Mthethwa, and Mpanza 1986:17-18).
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Sacred Sounds
To this end, “indigenous” customs were, and continue to be, foregrounded within a Christian framework in the in- dependent churches.
According to Lukhaimane, the ZCC arose out of “per- sonal differences” that existed between Engenas Lekgan- yane and the elders of the Zion Apostolic Church and the Zion Apostolic Faith Mission — churches of which Lek- ganyane was once a member (1980:2). Thus the formation of the ZCC was a “Black from Black” secession (Lukhai- mane 1980:2). What places the ZCC firmly within the separatist or independent movement and closely links it to the Ethiopian churches is not provenance but a common emphasis on the retention of certain African customs and norms.
As a Zionist organization, the ZCC is characterized by an emphasis on divine and faith healing, purification rites, dancing, night communion, river baptism, the holy spirit, taboos, prophesying, and so on.' There are several formations within the ZCC which have been created to provide prayer and communion forums for members. The main ones are Mokhukhu, the Female Choir, the Male Choir, the Brass Band, and Nkedi. Mokhukhu is generally regarded by members as the most important of all the groups.”
THE ORIGINS OF MOKHUKHU
In Sepedi the word mokhukhu means a “shack” or “shanty.” In Zion City Moria — the headquarters of the ZCC — situated some 40 km east of Pietersburg in the Northern Province, there are many such shacks.’ The manner in which the word mokhukhu came to be applied to a dominant formation within the ZCC lies in the early history of conflicts within the church. After Engenas Lekganyane’s death in 1948, Joseph, his son and appoint- ed heir, succeeded him as the leader of the church. How- ever, Joseph’s older brother, Edward, contested this with the help of some church members. Traditional custom was in his favor as the older brother, for among the Bapedi the eldest son succeeds his father. It is said that, as a way of intimidating Joseph’s followers, the pro-Edward faction
' Zionist churches of South Africa have nothing to do with Judaism or the movement for the development of the Jewish state. This brand of Zionism takes its name from Zion City, Illinois — the birthplace of the movement
* All non-English words in the text derive from Sepedi, one of the Bantu languages spoken in South Africa. The Sepedi-speaking Bapedi are the largest ethnic group in the Northern Province.
* Zion City Moria is also the meeting place for the Church's Easter gathering. More than a million pilgrims meet there every year during the Easter weekend. South African political leaders such as P.W. Botha, F.W. de Klerk, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and Nelson Mandela have attended the Easter meeting as guests of honor
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burned the shacks in which Joseph’s supporters lived. When each shack was ablaze, the Edward faction danced and sang a song containing the words “wu yasha umkhukhu” (a shack is burning). This song, which was isiZulu, was begun by pro-Edward migrant workers based in what was then known as the Reef. The dancing pattern they formed eventually became popular within the branch that the Edward camp established after the conflict and came to be known as Mokhukhu. The name now refers to both the dance pattern and to the group that performs the dance.
Edward’s faction called its branch the Zion Christian Church. By retaining the original name of the church that Engenas had founded, they were possibly suggesting that Edward was the legitimate successor to his father. Joseph’s camp coined the name St. Engenas Zion Christian Church for their group: By putting “St. Engenas” before “Zion Christian Church,” they were also insisting on their lawful link to the founder of the ZCC. Mokhukhu is found only in Edward’s ZCC, perhaps because it conjures up unhappy memories for the leadership in Joseph’s group. Because it played a decisive role in the establishment of Edward’s ZCC, Mokhukhu is accorded a central place in the church. Some members of the church refer to it as motheo wa Kereke (the foundation of the church).
STAMPING EVIL UNDERFOOT
According to members of Edward’s ZCC, Mokhukhu plays a role very similar to that of kgoro ya banna found among the Bapedi tribes. Kgoro refers to a meeting place for men and also to the meeting held there by tribesmen to discuss matters that affect the tribe. Within the church, this kgoro focuses mostly on communion, dancing, singing, and praying.
Mokhukhu is now a strictly male organization, but when it began women were part of it. They were eventually separated into their own structure, because the ZCC keeps to traditional values, and the rigors of Mokhukhu dancing subjected the women to what the church regarded as undignified behavior for them. For example, when they dance Mokhukhu, members frequently leap into the air and then come down stamping their feet on the ground with their huge white boots, called manyanyatha, in order symbolically to subjugate evil. The heavy stamps have a musical function as well in that they give each dance a particular rhythmic pattern. The leaps are also symbolic of each member’s desire to fly on the wings of faith — wings
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Sacred Sounds
which help the faithful to remain buoyant even in adver- sity. Thus the leaps are a self-energizing act for the believer; they are a way of replenishing spiritual resources and of expressing spiritual vitality physically. Mokhukhu gives male members of the Church a strong sense of identity and a forum for social interaction. Their khaki uniforms and white boots provide a visible sign of oneness for members and emphasize their role as mash ole a thapelo (an army of prayer).
Mokhukhu members are expected to protect the interests of the church when these are at stake, just as they did when Edward was involved in a struggle to succeed his father. Perhaps their army-like uniforms are also meant to suggest their role as defenders of the faith.
The dominant role of Mokhukhu as a men’s organiza- tion not only derives from the church’s history and values, but is also believed to have a Biblical justification;
1 Corinthians 11:7-9 is often quoted to support this:
[Man] reflects the image and glory of God. But woman reflects the glory of man; for man was not created from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for woman’s sake, but woman was created for man’s sake.
It is obvious that the feminist movement has not had an impact on the way the church establishment thinks.
An important factor contributing to the cohesiveness of
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At a gathering of the Zion Christian Church in South Africa’s northern province of Moria, the men of Mokhukhu dance as an expression of faith. More than one million pilgrims meet in Zion City Moria every year for the church’s Easter gathering.
Photo ©T. J. Lemon
Mokhukhu and unity within the ZCC is its insistence on discipline. Every new, able-bodied member of the church is expected to join Mokhukhu for purposes of initiation into church rituals and customs. (In the words of one member, the organization helps to “tame young men by subjecting them to its discipline.”) The disciplined be- havior of Mokhukhu members is legendary, and one can easily see it when they perform. Another factor is the church’s belief that in worship one has to be passionately involved; the soul, mind, and heart — in fact the entire body — must be focused on God. This allows for intense religious expression, which gives the church a unity of
purpose.
HUNGER FOR GOD
The impetus behind the energetic performances of Mokhukhu derives from a hunger for God and the holy spirit. Without a desire for union with God, one’s perfor- mance becomes insipid. As an old member put it, “When we perform, hunger for food is replaced by hunger for the Holy Spirit. Once we are filled up with the Holy Spirit, we can perform all night.”
According to the code of